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THE  STRANGE  ADVENTURES 
OF  A  PEBBLE 


ADVENTURES  IN  NATURE'S  WONDERLANDS 

THE 

STRANGE  ADVENTURES 
OF  A  PEBBLE 


BY 

HALLAM  HAWKSWORTH 

AVXHOR  or  "THE  ADVENTURES  or  A  GRAIN  OF  DOST' 


CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO  BOSTON 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

A 


THE   SCRIBNER  PRESS 


PREFACE 

The  purpose  of  this  little  book  is  to  present  the  chief 
features  in  the  strange  story  of  the  pebbles;  and  so  of  the 
larger  pebble  we  call  the  earth.  It  is  hoped  that  readers 
of  various  ages  will  be  entertained,  without  suspecting 
that  they  are  being  taught. 

Several  things  led  the  author  to  believe  that  such  a  book 
might  be  wanted. 

(a)  The  circumstances  under  which  it  was  written. 

(b)  The  fact  that  there  seemed  to  be  an  opportunity 
for  improvement  not  only  in  the  popular  presentation  of 
scientific  topics  but  in  the  character  and  method  of  review 
questions  and  suggestions  following  such  topics  in  school 
texts. 

(c)  Experience  has  shown  that  pictures  may  be  made 
to  perform  a  much  more  vital  function  in  teaching  than 
is  usually  assigned  to  them  in  the  text-books.1 

1  On  this  subject  I  cannot  do  better,  perhaps,  than  quote  from  an 
article  on  "The  Picture  Book  in  Education,"  contributed  to  the  New 
York  Evening  Post  : 

"We  learn  more  easily  by  looking  at  things  than  by  memorizing 
words  about  them.  The  principle,  of  course,  holds  whether  the  image 
which  the  eye  receives  comes  from  the  object  itself  or  only  from  the 
picture  of  the  object.  Therefore  we  should  learn  to  read  pictures  as 
well  as  books. 

"New  York  has  long  recognized  the  added  efficiency  in  the  teaching 
process  to  be  obtained  from  the  use  of  pictures.  The  Division  of  Visual 
Instruction,  established  thirty  years  ago,  has  an  international  reputa- 
tion for  the  extent  of  its  equipment,  the  simplicity  of  its  methods, 
and  the  excellence  of  its  results." 


vi  PREFACE 

(d)  In  the  particular  field  to  which  this  story  relates 
comparatively  little  has  been  written  either  for  reading  in 
the  family  circle  or  for  use  in  the  school;  although  the 
relation  of  physiography,  not  only  to  human  history  and 
political  and  commercial  geography  but  to  the  whole  im- 
mense realm  of  natural  science,  is  so  basic  and  its  great 
principles  and  processes  so  striking  in  their  appeal  to  curi- 
osity and  our  sense  of  the  grand  and  the  dramatic.1 

What  here  appear  as  chapters  were  originally  little  talks 
for  the  evening  entertainment  of  the  juvenile  members  of 
a  certain  family  and  the  neighboring  children,  who  were 
attracted  by  what  came  to  be  known  as  the  "pebble  par- 
ties," during  the  season  at  Mount  Desert  Island.  They 
are  here  given  in  substantially  the  form  in  which  they 
first  saw  the  light.  While  they  proved  entirely  intelligible 
to  boys  and  girls  of  eight  and  ten  they  seemed  equally 
interesting  to  the  older  members  of  the  audience,  including 
a  youth  of  eighteen  in  his  last  year  of  high  school,  whose 
comments,  in  the  language  of  his  caste,  deserve  to  share 
the  credit  for  whatever  of  whimsical  humor  and  colloquial 
style  the  author  may  have  succeeded  in  incorporating  into 
the  narrative. 

The  familiar  tone,  the  number  and  variety  of  the  chap- 
ters, the  sub-heads  and  marginal  captions  and  the  char- 
acter and  treatment  of  the  illustrations  have  a  similar 
origin.  They  represent  the  variety  of  aspects  under  which 
it  was  found  necessary  to  present  the  facts  in  order  to  hold 

1  Commenting  on  the  need  of  popular  literature  dealing  with  earth 
science,  Doctor  Shaler  says: 

"  In  no  other  fields  are  large  and  important  truths  so  distinctly 
related  to  human  interests  so  readily  traced;  yet  the  treatises  dealing 
with  these  truths  are  few  in  number  and  generally  recondite." 


PREFACE  vii 

a  capricious  audience  whose  attendance  and  attention  were 
wholly  voluntary. 

The  use  of  unfamiliar  words  and  scientific  terms  has 
been  avoided  as  much  as  possible,  consistent  with  the  edu- 
cational purpose  of  the  book.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that 
educators  do  not  consider  it  good  practice  to  omit  all  words 
which  children  cannot  understand  at  sight;  the  theory  being 
that  it  is  by  the  judicious  introduction  of  words  not  cur- 
rent on  the  playground  that  the  intellectual  interests  and 
capacities  of  children  are  enlarged.  With  regard  to  scien- 
tific topics  (it  is  further  argued)  a  large  proportion  of  the 
classics  of  science  written  for  the  general  reader  and  which 
boys  and  girls  of  fourteen  and  upward  should  be  able  to 
read  easily  and  with  pleasure — Shaler,  Darwin,  and  Wal- 
lace, for  example — contain  quite  a  few  scientific  terms;  and 
these  it  would  be  well  that  young  people  learn  from  con- 
text or  definition  in  their  previous  reading  in  works  of  a 
more  elementary  nature. 

Moreover,  while  younger  children  will  read  a  book  the 
general  character  of  which  interests  them,  even  though 
they  do  not  understand  every  word  or  get  all  the  thoughts 
in  it,  sophisticated  youths  of  the  high-school  age  will  have 
none  of  it,  if  they  suspect  that  they  are  being  talked  down 
to.  In  the  story  of  the  pebble  the  aim,  accordingly,  has 
been  not  only  to  make  a  book  that  young  people  will  not 
outgrow  but  one  that  will  be  of  some  interest  to  adults, 
particularly  to  travellers. 

Not  only  in  the  text  is  special  emphasis  laid  on  the  inter- 
pretation of  landscape,  but  the  character,  treatment,  and 
arrangement  of  the  illustrations  is  intended  to  train  the 
eye  to  read  the  story  of  the  earth  drama  as  recorded  in  the 


viii  PREFACE 

forms  of  valley,  mountain,  field,  and  shore.  And — since 
the  earth  is  not,  after  all,  a  mere  geological  specimen — 
these  illustrations  include  reproductions  of  paintings, 
scenery  as  interpreted  by  the  poet  and  the  artist. 

To  create  an  appropriate  atmosphere  and  so  add  to  the 
vividness  of  conception,  the  twelve  chapters  each  deal 
with  a  seasonable  subject. 

RELATION  TO  THE  TEXT-BOOK 

The  relation  of  this  book  to  the  formal  study  of  physiog- 
raphy or  geology  in  the  schools  will  be  apparent.  The 
classified  and  exhaustive  treatment  of  the  text-book,  while 
so  admirably  adapted  to  organize  knowledge  already 
acquired,  or  reward  an  appetite  already  aroused,  is  not  at 
all  adapted  for  creating  this  appetite  in  the  first  place;  a 
thing  so  essential  to  true  progress  in  education.  For  exam- 
ple, in  a  text-book,  the  many  aspects  of  glaciers  and  their 
work,  which  are  here  distributed  in  a  number  of  sections 
(as  the  discovery  of  these  aspects  was  distributed  in  time) , 
are  usually  dealt  with  in  a  single  chapter  or  series  of  chap- 
ters, whose  nature  the  reader  at  once  gathers  from  the 
title,  "The  Work  of  the  Glaciers." 

The  young  reader  or  school  pupil  is  thus  deprived  of  the 
element  of  surprise,  of  the  pleasure  of  following  an  unfold- 
ing mystery,  which  was  at  once  the  inspiration  and  reward 
of  men  of  science  to  whom  we  owe  these  discoveries. 

If  left  to  the  text-book  alone,  the  student  acquires  his 
facts  too  rapidly  and  too  easily.  The  result  is  a  loss  of 
both  pleasure  and  profit.  The  movements  of  the  glaciers 
and  the  nature  of  the  movement,  which  gave  Agassiz  seven 
years  of  keen  delight  to  ascertain,  the  pupil  acquires 


PREFACE  ix 

through  his  text-book  in  something  like  seven  minutes, 
and  without  either  the  pleasure  or  the  profit  of  Agassiz' 
gradual  and  inductive  acquirement  of  this  knowledge. 

In  other  words,  to  begin  the  study  of  a  given  science  by 
means  of  a  text-book,  without  previously  arousing  interest 
in  the  subject,  is  to  assume  a  greater  zeal  on  the  part  of 
school  pupils  and  college  students  than,  it  is  reasonable 
to  assume,  was  possessed  by  the  scientists  themselves.  It 
was  the  attraction  of  the  unknown  rather  than  the  rapid 
acquirement  of  the  known  that  drew  them  on  to  their 
grand  discoveries,  their  illuminating  generalizations. 

In  recording  the  pebble's  story  the  endeavor  has  been 
to  cause  the  reader  to  come  upon  the  data  on  which  these 
generalizations  were  based,  piece  by  piece,  here  a  little  and 
there  a  little — as  did  the  scientists  themselves. 

Interesting  as  the  mere  facts  of  physiographic  science 
finally  become  to  the  trained  scientist  they  make  little 
appeal  either  to  the  average  boy  or  the  average  adult,  if  he 
must  first  come  in  contact  with  them  as  they  are  presented 
in  the  text-book;  classified,  catalogued,  labelled  in  scientific 
terms  and  laid  away  (as  it  seems  to  him)  in  chapter,  sec- 
tion, and  paragraph,  like  specimens  in  a  museum. 

Since  this  book  is  concerned  mainly  with  landscapes  and 
the  story  of  the  forces  that  helped  to  shape  them  it  does 
not  undertake  to  deal  with  mineralogy.  Within  the  fields 
thus  defined  it  is  believed  that  the  larger  facts,  the  great 
moving  causes  of  things,  have  been  covered  as  thoroughly 
as  they  are  in  the  average  elementary  text-book.  In  addi- 
tion, subjects  in  great  variety  are  touched  upon  which  do 
not  come  within  the  province  of  the  text-book,  but  are 
such  as  naturally  suggest  themselves  in  the  broader  and 


X  PREFACE 

richer  discussion  of  such   topics  in   the  conversation   of 
cultivated  people. 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

Since  the  whole  purpose  of  the  school  is  to  prepare  for 
the  larger  world  of  life  and  books  outside  the  school,  special 
attention  is  invited  to  the  department  of  questions  and 
suggestions  following  each  chapter.  As  indicated  in  the 
introduction  to  the  first  of  the  series,  an  effort  has  been 
made  to  capitalize  the  fact  that  young  people  enjoy  conun- 
drums and  curious  quests  in  the  field  of  books  quite  as 
well  as  mere  passive  reading. 

The  treatment  is  somewhat  discursive,  and  in  this  and 
other  respects  is  intended  to  be  more  like  the  conversation 
of  cultivated  parents  with  their  children  than  like  the 
review  questions  of  a  text-book;  the  review  element  being 
incidental,  in  recalling  the  topics  out  of  which  these  ques- 
tions and  suggestions  grow.  The  correlations  in  the  most 
modern  texts  lead  into  equally  wide  and  varied  fields. 

If  he  has  succeeded  in  the  aim  thus  indicated,  the  author 
believes  this  department  may  easily  prove  one  of  the  most 
interesting  as  well  as  educatively  useful  features  of  the 
work.  H.  H. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGI 

I.     In  the  Beginning i 

II.     The  Winter  that  Lasted  All  Summer     ...  20 

III.  The  Soul  of  the  Spring  and  the  Lands  of  Eternal 

Snow 41 

IV.  The  April  Rains  and  the  Work  of  the  Rivers  .  66 
V.     The  Fairyland  of  Change 93 

VI.     The  Secrets  of  the  Hills 113 

VII.     The  Stones  of  the  Field 145 

VIII.     The  Desert 161 

IX.     In  the  Lands  of  the  Lakes 191 

X.     The  Autumn  Winds  and  the  Rock  Mills  of  the 

Sea 212 

XI.     The  Handwriting  on  the  Walls  .      .      .'    .      .  234 

XII.     The  End  of  the  World 260 

Index 279 


THE   ILLUSTRATIONS 

In  furtherance  of  the  idea  referred  to  in  the  preface, 
that  a  far  more  effective  use  may  be  made  of  pictures 
in  teaching  than  is  usual,  a  very  extended  use  has  been 
made  of  them  in  "The  Strange  Adventures  of  a  Pebble," 
and,  moreover,  these  pictures  have  been  made  to  talk, 
as  it  were,  by  means  of  extended  analysis  and  comment 
upon  their  significant  features;  this  for  the  double  purpose 
of  teaching  important  facts,  as  only  pictures  can  teach, 
and  of  stimulating  the  invaluable  habit  of  observation 
and  of  logical  reasoning  about  things  observed. 

One  of  the  main  purposes  of  the  book,  as  stated  in  the 
preface,  is  to  stimulate  interest  in  further  reading  and 
study  on  the  many  subjects  to  which  it  relates. 

The  author  wishes  to  make  special  acknowledgment  of 
the  co-operation  of  the  editor  of  St.  Nicholas  and  the  fol- 
lowing publishers  in  supplying  the  illustrations  on  the 
pages  indicated: 

The  Macmillan  Co.:  u,  29,  36,  41,  52,  83,  108,  121, 
132,  145,  152,  168,  173,  195,  221,  225,  226,  235,  240,  249, 
254,  257.  The  Century  Co.:  For  the  following  from  the 
St.  Nicholas  magazine:  38,  47,  70,  184,  199. 

D.  Appleton  and  Co.:  12,  22,  60,  97,  102,  136,  141,  224, 
236,  241,  243,  245,  247,  252,  257.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons: 
59,  105,  147.  E.  P.  Button  &  Co.:  157.  Henry  Holt  & 
Co.:  37,  84,  149,  193,  207,  250.  Silver  Burdett  Co.:  28. 
World's  Work:  79.  Geological  Survey:  13,  23,  114,  130, 
194,  238.  Wisconsin  Survey:  33.  Encyclopedia  Bri- 
tannica:  256. 


THE  STRANGE  ADVENTURES 
OF  A  PEBBLE 

CHAPTER    I 

(JANUARY) 

In  the  beginning  the  earth  was  without  form  and  void. 

— Genesis  i:  1-2. 

IN    THE    BEGINNING 

I.    How  THE  WORLDS  AND  MYSELF  WERE  BORN 

I've  been  through  fire  and  water,  /  tell  you !  From  my 
earliest  pebblehood  the  wildest  things  you  could  imagine 
have  been  happening  to  this  world  of  ours,  and  I  have 
been  right  in  the  midst  of  them. 

HOW   MR.    APOLLO   TURNED    ON   THE   LIGHT 

The  first  scenes  of  all  in  my  strange,  eventful  history 
remind  me  of  the  old  Greek  story  about  Apollo  and  that 
boy  of  his — Phaeton.  Apollo's  business,  you  remember, 
was  to  take  the  sun  through  the  skies  every  day  in  his 
golden  chariot,  so  that  people  could  see  to  get  about.  It 
was  a  ticklish  job,  as  the  horses  were  fiery.  As  a  rule, 
however,  things  went  fairly  well.  To  be  sure,  there  were 
overdone  days  occasionally,  just  as  there  are  now.  Then 
the  crops  would  wither  and  the  birds  and  brooks  stop 
singing.  This,  as  the  little  Greek  boys  and  girls  believed, 
was  because  Apollo's  horses  ran  too  near  the  earth, 


STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


HOW  MR.  APOLLO  TURNED  ON  THE  LIGHT 

Behold  the  sun-god  starting  on  his  daily  round !  Aurora,  Goddess  of  the  Dawn, 
precedes  him  scattering  flowers,  the  lovely  colors  of  the  morning  sky.  The  other 
figures  are  the  early  hours. 

The  Greek  poets  used  to  play  with  these  myth  stories  a  good  deal,  changing 
them  to  suit  their  poetic  fancy.  Theocritus,  for  example,  in  a  beautiful  fragment 
that  has  come  down  to  us,  paints  this  picture  of  the  breaking  day: 

"Dawn,  up  from  the  sea  to  the  sky, 
By  her  fleet-footed  steeds  was  drawn." 

You  see,  according  to  this  poet's  conception,  Miss  Dawn  had  a  chariot  of  her  own. 


But  nothing  serious  happened  until  one  time  Phaeton 
persuaded  father  to  let  him  drive  the  sun  chariot  for  a 
day.  The  horses,  feeling  at  once  a  new  and  weak  hand 
on  the  reins,  tore  out  of  the  regular  road  and  went  dashing 
right  and  left.  They  even  got  so  near  the  North  Pole 
that  the  ice  began  to  melt.  They  fairly  flew  down  toward 
the  earth,  set  the  mountains  smoking,  and  dried  up  all  the 
springs  and  most  of  the  rivers. 

THEN  THINGS  BEGAN  TO  HAPPEN 

They  dried  up  a  certain  great  lake,  so  that  there  is  to 
this  day  the  Libyan  Desert  in  Africa,  where  this  lake  used 
to  be.  They  made  the  very  sea  shrink  so  that  there  were 
"wide  naked  plains  where  once  its  billows  rose." 


IN  THE  BEGINNING  3 

Finally  Mother  Earth  called  on  Jupiter  Pluvius,  as  god 
of  thunder,  rain,  and  storms,  to  stop  Phaeton  and  the  run- 
aways and  put  out  the  fire. 

Struck  by  a  bolt  of  lightning  poor  Phaeton  fell  headlong 
from  the  skies,  and  a  world- wide  rain  put  out  the  world- 
wide fire. 


From  a  cameo  by  Da  Vinci 

THE   FALL  OF  PHAETON 
(Museum,  Florence) 

Now,  would  you  believe  it,  this  queer  old  Old  World 
story  may  really  be  true  in  its  way.  Of  course  there  never 
was  a  sun  god  and  no  spoiled  boy  who  did  just  that  thing; 
although  many  spoiled  boys  have  tried  to  set  the  world 
on  fire  and  failed  because  they  thought  it  would  be  so  easy. 

But  the  earth  really  has  been  on  fire  in  a  sense;  that  is, 
has  melted  from  the  heat.  And  in  parts  w.here  you  would 
least  suspect — the  rocks.  There's  where  I  got  into  it. 
And  some  of  these  rocks,  not  more  than  ten  miles1  from 
where  you  live,  are  either  still  molten,  or  continue  to  melt 
from  time  to  time;  as  you  can  see  when  lava  comes  pour- 
ing from  volcanoes,  such  as  those  of  Hawaii. 

Straight  down,  of  course. 


4          STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

In  the  days  of  the  Apollo  story  most  men  still  thought 
the  earth  was  the  centre  of  the  universe;  that  the  sun, 
moon,  and  stars  moved  around  it.  But  Pythagoras,  one 
of  the  Greek  philosophers,  had  formed  a  general  notion  of 
the  truth  that  the  earth  is  only  one  planet  in  a  great  sys- 
tem. Then,  along  in  the  Sixteenth  Century,  came  Coper- 
nicus, and  by  mathematical  calculation — he  was  a  fine 
hand  at  figures — began  to  find  out  things  that  showed 
the  wise  old  Greek  had  made  a  happy  guess.  Then 
Galileo,  Kepler,  Newton,  and  others,  each  working  on 
different  parts  of  the  problem,  finally  settled  the  question. 
They  found  that  there  are  just  worlds  of  worlds,  and  that 
ours  is  only  one  of  them. 

About  the  time  of  the  American  Revolution  a  great 
French  mathematician,  Laplace,  worked  out  a  story  of  the 
origin  of  the  earth  which  is,  briefly,  this: 

What  we  know  now  as  the  solar  system — the  sun  with 
its  attendant  worlds — was  once  a  single  big  ball  of  fiery 
gas,  a  nebula.  As  this  nebula  cooled  it  shrank,  and  as  it 
shrank  it  whirled  faster  because  it  had  a  smaller  track  in 
which  to  turn,  and  with  an  equal  amount  of  force  would, 
of  course,  get  around  oftener.  The  faster  it  whirled  the 
more  the  outside  of  it  tended  to  fly  off,  as  water  flies  off 
a  whirling  grindstone  or  as  a  stone  flies  from  a  sling. 
This  centrifugal  or  " fly-away"  force  was  greatest  at  the 
sun's  equator,  and  it  threw  off  big  rings.  Afterward, 
around  some  centre  of  greater  density  in  these  rings,  the 
gaseous  particles  in  the  rest  of  the  ring  gathered,  so  form- 
ing spheres.  Then  some  of  the  spheres  themselves  threw 
off  rings  in  the  same  way  which  became  what  are  called 


IN  THE  BEGINNING 


By  permission  of  the  Mount  Wilson  Observatory 

WATCHING  THE   MAKING  OF  WORLDS 

At  first  you  won't  see  anything  very  striking  about  this  picture,  perhaps;  but 
doesn't  it  give  you  something  of  a  thrill  to  be  told  that  you  are  here  looking  not 
only  at  the  making  of  a  world  but  of  worlds  of  worlds?  A  whole  solar  system !  In 
the  course  of  unthinkable  time  that  big,  round  ball  in  the  centre  will  be  the  sun,  and 
what  appear  to  be  little  knots  wrapped  close  around  it — they  are  really  far  from 
each  other  and  from  the  sun — will  become  rounded  worlds  like  ours.  They  will  be 
forced  into  roundness  by  their  own  gravity,  pulling  toward  their  centres.  They 
don't  look  any  farther  apart  than  the  strands  in  a  little  sister's  braided  hair,  do 
they  ?  But  remember  how  small  this  picture  is  compared  with  what  it  represents. 
What  here  show  as  little  dark  lines,  separating  the  embryo  worlds,  are  in  reality 
vast  spaces,  like  those  you  see  between  the  stars  at  night — millions  and  millions  and 
millions  of  miles ! 


satellites.  The  moon,  which  is  our  satellite,  Laplace  sup- 
posed to  have  originated  in  this  way.  The  ring  which 
Saturn  still  wears  he  thought  would  some  day  become  a 
satellite. 

So,  you  see,  the  myth  story  of  Phaeton  foreshadowed, 


6          STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

in  a  way,  the  science  story  of  Laplace.  For,  according  to 
the  Laplace  theory,  the  world  was  on  fire;  and  a  big  rain 
storm,  lasting  for  ages,  with  plenty  of  thunder  and  light- 
ning, did  help  put  it  out. 

This  theory  of  Laplace  was  long  accepted  as  the  true 
one.  Indeed,  it  was  only  yesterday,  comparatively,  that 
other  explanations  were  offered  as  to  how  we  came  to 
have  a  world  to  stand  on.  The  broadest  of  these  new 
theories — the  one  that  undertakes  to  explain  the  most — 
is  that  of  Professor  Chamberlin,  of  the  University  of 
Chicago. 

YOU    CAN    SEE    THESE    WORLDS    IN    THE    MAKING 

Owing  to  the  more  powerful  telescopes  of  to-day,  and 
the  amount  of  exploring  among  the  worlds  that  has  been 
going  on  since  the  time  of  Laplace,  several  things  have 
been  discovered  that  have  brought  his  theory  into  ques- 
tion. For  one  thing,  many  more  nebulae  have  been  found 
in  space  than  were  known  when  Laplace  worked  out  his 
great  conception,  and  among  them  all  not  one  has  been 


THE   SUN  AND   HIS  PEBBLE   WORLDS 

However  the  worlds  of  our  solar  system  may  have  been  made,  when  they  were 
done  there  was  the  sun  in  the  centre  and  his  worlds  travelling  around  him  in  their 
ordered  orbits.  Nearest  the  sun  is  Mercury.  Then  Venus,  Earth,  Mars,  Jupiter, 
Saturn,  Uranus;  then,  finally,  Neptune  nearly  3,000,000,000  miles  away  and  with 
an  orbit  so  big  that  Christmas  comes  only  once  in  60,000  years ! 


IN  THE  BEGINNING  7 

found  with  a  central  mass  surrounded  by  a  ring.  More- 
over, our  sharp-eyed  telescopes  show  that  Saturn's  ring, 
which  Laplace  thought  was  a  solid  mass,  is  really  made  up 
of  a  great  number  of  small  satellites:  baby  worlds.  The 
greater  number  of  these  nebulae  are  like  the  ones  you  see 


HOW  YOU  CAN  WATCH  THE  WORLD  TURN  ROUND 

Timepieces,  you  know,  are  really  machines  for  keeping  track  of  the  apparent 
movement  of  the  sun.  Here  is  a  device,  as  simple  as  a  sun-dial  and  much  simpler 
than  a  clock,  by  which  you  can  record  the  actual  motion  of  the  earth.  Sprinkle  the 
surface  of  the  water  in  a  bowl  with  chalk  dust.  On  this,  sift  from  a  piece  of  paper 
powdered  charcoal  or  pencil  dust,  so  as  to  make  a  clean-cut  band  extending  across 
the  centre  and  over  the  edge  of  the  bowl.  In  the  course  of  several  hours  you  will 
find  that  the  black  band  has  swept  round  from  east  to  west,  because  the  water  has 
stood  still  while  the  bowl  has  been  carried  from  west  to  east  by  the  whirling  world. 


in  the  illustration  on  page  5.  They  consist  of  very  bright 
centres  with  spirals  streaming  out  from  opposite  sides. 
Just  take  a  look  at  the  picture.  Doesn't  the.  shape  of  those 
spirals  suggest  that  the  central  mass  is  whirling?  And  no- 
tice the  little  white  lumps  here  and  there.  The  thinner, 
veil-like  portions  of  the  mass,  as  well  as  the  "  lumps, "  are 
supposed  to  be  made  of  particles  of  matter,  but  the  lumps 
to  be  more  condensed.  All  the  particles,  big  and  little,  are 


8          STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

known  to  be  revolving  about  the  central  mass,  much  as 
the  earth  revolves  about  the  sun.  The  little  white  lumps, 
or  knots,  in  the  filmy  skein  are  supposed  to  be  worlds  in 
the  making.  Being  larger  than  the  other  particles,  they 
draw  the  smaller  to  them,  according  to  the  same  law  of 
gravitation  which  makes  every  unsupported  thing  on  earth 
fall  to  the  ground,  because  the  earth  is  so  much  bigger 
than  anything  there  is  on  it.  Since  these  bright  little 
lumps  behave  so  much  like  the  worlds  we  know  as  planets, 
and  yet  are  relatively  so  small,  they  are  called  planetessi- 
mals,  or  "little  planets."  So  Professor  Chamberlin's  idea 
of  the  origin  of  worlds  is  known  as  the  "  planetessimal 
theory." 

According  to  this  theory  the  earth  was  once  a  mere 
baby  world  like  those  white  lumps,  and  grew  by  gathering 
in  its  smaller  neighbors  from  time  to  time  by  the  power 
of  gravitation.  The  larger  it  grew  the  more  particles  of 
solid  matter  it  could  draw  to  itself.  Then  it  drew  larger 
masses,  for  with  increased  mass  came  an  increased  pull 
of  gravity.  In  the  same  way  the  earth  is  still  growing, 
for  it  is  thought  that  the  shooting  stars  or  meteors  we  see 
at  night  are  little  planets  being  gathered  in. 

II.    How  THE  CONTINENTS  CAME  UP  OUT  OF  THE  SEA 

And  before  I  got  to  be  myself  at  all,  while  I  was  still 
only  a  part  of  the  big  pebble  called  the  Earth,  your  geog- 
raphy and  I  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 

For  ages  and  ages ! 

This  is  one  of  the  stories  you  will  find  in  the  literature 
of  science,  of  how,  along  with  North  America,  South 


IN  THE  BEGINNING  9 

America,  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and  Australia — have  I  left 
out  any? — I  came  to  land  and  brought  your  geography 
with  me. 

I  remember  hearing  a  pretty  young  lady  say,  once  upon 
a  time: 

"There,"  said  she,  "I'm  through  with  geography  for- 
ever!" 

You  see,  although  she  had  passed  with  marks  around 
90,  she  still  had  the  idea  that  geography  is  a  book. 
You  and  I  know,  of  course,  that  the  real  geography  isn't 
a  book  at  all.  It's  the  world  itself. 

PUTTING   THE    CONTINENTS    ON   THE    GLOBE 

But  there  was  a  time  when  there  was  no  land.  It  was 
all  water,  and  the  continents  were  lifted  into  their  places, 
much  as  you  model  a  continent  in  making  a  relief  map; 
they  were  sketched  out  and  then  filled  in.  North  America, 
for  example.  First  of  all  up  came  that  mass  in  the  north- 
east in  what  is  now  Canada;  the  Lauren tian  Highlands, 
as  they  are  called  in  your  geography.  They  rose  very, 
very  slowly,  you  understand,  only  a  few  feet  in  a  thou- 
sand years;  for  Nature  has  all  the  time  there  is  and  never 
hurries.  These  highlands  (they  are  really  granite  moun- 
tains worn  down),  along  with  the  other  rock  formations 
of  our  continent,  are  supposed  to  be  the  oldest  land  on 
the  earth.  The  continents  of  Europe  and  the  rest  were 
born  later.  So  you  see  Columbus  didn't  discover  the 
New  World  at  all;  he  really  came  from  the  New  World 
and  discovered  the  Old ! 

Next  after  the  highlands  north  of  the  St.  Lawrence  up 
came  the  tops  of  the  mountains  you  see  running  along 


io        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


HOW  YOUR  GEOGRAPHY  ROSE  OUT  OF  THE  SEA 


the  eastern  coast,  what  we  now  call  the  Appalachians. 
Then  the  Rocky  Mountains  began  to  raise  their  heads  and 
looked  eastward  toward  their  brother  mountains  across  a 
great  mediterranean  sea,  the  bottom  of  which  is  now  the 
Mississippi  Valley.  Mediterranean  means  "middle  of  the 
land." 

ADMITTING  NEW  STATES   TO   THE  MAP 

Wisconsin,  into  which  I  moved  from  the  Laurentian 
Highlands  in  later  years,  was  on  the  lower  end  of  a  long, 
thin  tongue  of  rock  reaching  out  from  these  highlands  to 
the  southwest.  While  Wisconsin  went  on  growing,  the 
Alleghanies  came  up  and  brought  some  Middle  Atlantic 
geography  with  them.  Up  with  all  these  early  settler 
mountains  came,  in  the  course  of  time,  the  beginnings  of 
neighbor  States.  All  these  big,  barren  rocks  (as  they  were 
then),  rising  and  ever  rising,  age  after  age,  spread  more 


IN  THE  BEGINNING 


ii 


surface  to  the  sun.  And  the  sun,  and  the  wind,  and  the 
frost,  followed  by  the  lowest  forms  of  plant  life — the  Adams 
of  the  vegetable  world — gradually  worked  the  surface  of 
the  rock  into  soil;  and  so,  as  we  may  say,  got  ready  for 
the  spring  plowing. 

By  this  constant  rising  and  building  on  of  the  soil  the 
foundations  of  our  States  grew  out  toward  one  another  in 
order,  according  to  the  constitution  of  things,  "to  form  a 
more  perfect  union."  The  United  States,  at  a  time  which, 
we  may  say,  corresponds  to  "The  Expansion  Period"  in 
your  school  history,  grew  southward  from  Wisconsin  and 
westward  from  the  Appalachians  until  they  made  con- 
tinuous land;  and  there  was  your  Ohio  and  Indiana  and 
the  rest  of  the  North  Central  group.  Below,  toward  the 
south,  were  more  big  stone  islands  here  and  there,  the 
first  sketches  or  blockings  out  of  the  Southern  States. 
Florida  seems  to  have  been  added  later,  as  a  final  touch; 
an  afterthought,  as  one  of  my  Wisconsin  neighbors  puts 


LANDS  THE   SEA  HAS   SWALLOWED 

Parts  of  the  continents  as  they  used  to  be  but  which  are  now  beneath  the  waters 
are  here  shown.  Compare  this  with  the  globe  map  in  your  geography.  It  is 
estimated  that  there  are  10,000,000  square  miles  of  this  land.  You'll  hear  more 
about  this  swallowing  habit  of  the  sea  in  Chapter  X;  but,  as  you  will  learn,  there's 
nothing  to  be  frightened  about. 


12        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


From  Gilbert  and  Brigham's  "An  Introduction  to 
Physical  Geography."  By  permission  of  D.  A pple- 
tini  and  Company 

BUT  WON'T  WE   GO  UNDER  AGAIN? 

These  little  people  of  the  sea-floor  furnish  one  of  the  most  assuring  evidences  we 
have  that  although  the  continents  rose  out  of  the  sea,  they  will  never  go  under  the 
sea  again.  These  are  shell  creatures  found  in  the  slime  dredged  from  the  bottom 
of  the  deepest  parts  of  the  sea.  The  shells  of  creatures  that  live  near  shore  are 
found  in  abundance  in  our  rocks,  but  these  types  are  found  only  in  the  deepest  seas. 
So,  since  the  deep  down-wrinklings  of  the  earth  that  make  the  sea-basins  have 
never  risen,  it  is  probable  they  never  will;  and  consequently  that  the  up-wrinkles 
— the  continents — will  continue  to  stay  above  the  waters. 


it.  And  it  was  much  enlarged  by  those  remarkable  little 
world  builders,  the  corals.  Mexico  and  Central  America, 
of  course,  are  a  part  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  system. 

It's  a  wonderful  old  story,  isn't  it?  But  more  wonderful 
still,  it  always  seemed  to  me,  is  the  story  of  how  they  found 
all  this  out. 


IN  THE  BEGINNING  13 

Who  do  you  suppose  first  told  about  it?  The  last 
people  you  would  ever  think  of,  I'm  sure — the  oysters ! 

WHAT   THE   OYSTERS    TOLD   XENOPHANES 

It  sounds  like  a  passage  from  "Alice  in  Wonderland,"  or 
"Through  the  Looking-Glass,"  doesn't  it?  But  it's  a  fact. 
Away  back,  more  than  2,000  years  ago,  a  wise  Greek  called 
Xenophanes,  who  lived  in  a  place  called  Colophon,  and  so 
was  called  Xenophanes  of  Colophon,  said  that  he  thought 
the  rocks  of  the  mountain  sides  must  once  have  been 
under  the  sea  because  of  the  oyster  shells  that  were  found 
embedded  in  many  of  them. 

"For,"  said  Xenophanes  of  Colophon,  "how  else  could 


HOW  THE  OYSTERS  TOLD  THE  GREAT  SECRET 

Here  is  a  good  example  of  the  thing  that  led  wise  old  Xenophanes  of  Colophon 
to  make  the  startling  assertion  that  the  mountains  were  once  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea.  These  are  the  shells  of  oysters  embedded  in  limestone — which,  by  the  way, 
the  shells  of  the  oysters  themselves  helped  make — and  this  piece  of  stone  is  from 
the  top  of  a  high  mountain. 


I4        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  oyster  shells  have  got  there?  Who  ever  heard  of 
oysters  climbing  a  mountain?" 

Another  evidence  that  lands  come  up  out  of  the  sea  is 
this:  Even  before  the  days  of  Scott  and  Maryatt  and 
Fenimore  Cooper,  men — and,  of  course,  boys — were  inter- 
ested in  caves  that  face  upon  the  sea.  They  are  such 
jolly  places  for  pirates,  and  for  boys  playing  pirate,  and 
for  mermaids  drying  their  hair.  It  was  plain  that  down 
where  the  waves  in  storms  could  reach  them  the  sea  itself 
bored  out  these  caves.  But  how  about  those  caves  in  the 
cliffs  high  above  the  waves?  The  sea  must  have  made 
them,  too,  once  upon  a  time  when  the  land  was  lower  in 
the  water.  Then  the  land  was  raised. 

Still  more  striking  was  the  fact  that  not  only  caves  but 
old  sea  beaches  were  found  on  hill  and  mountain  slopes 
far.  from  the  sea,  sometimes  hundreds  of  miles  inland. 
You  can  tell  the  old  beaches  by  their  shape  and  the  way 
in  which  the  pebbles  are  sorted  by  size,  just  as  you  find 
them  on  beaches  to-day. 

THE   BAKED  APPLE  AND   THE   BULGING  WORLD 

The  causes  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  sea  coasts  are  many, 
and  there  are  things  about  these  movements  not  yet  under- 
stood. By  what  wonderful  machinery,  then  (we  might 
naturally  ask),  were  the  continents  themselves  lifted  out 
of  the  sea?  To  this,  which  would  seem  much  the  harder 
question  of  the  two,  the  answer  is  simple;  as  simple  as  a 
baked  apple.  You  know  an  apple  that  goes  into  the  oven 
with  a  smooth,  neat  skin  comes  out  covered  with  wrinkles. 
Now  suppose,  instead  of  a  little,  hot  apple,  covered  with  a 
thin  skin,  you  have  a  big,  hot  earth  covered  with  a  thick 


IN  THE  BEGINNING 


THE  RISE  AND   FALL  OF  JUPITER   SERAPIS 

In  this  account  of  the  ups  and  downs  of  land  and  sea  I  must  tell  you  the  story 
of  Jupiter  Serapis.  In  the  days  of  the  Romans  this  temple,  for  his  honor,  stood 
on  the  seashore  near  Naples.  Of  that  temple  only  three  pillars  remain,  but  they 
answer  a  very  important  question.  On  these  pillars,  over  twenty  feet  above  sea 
level,  is  a  belt  of  holes  bored  in  the  stone  by  a  certain  shelled  sea-creature,  one  of 
the  barnacle  family;  so  evidently  these  pillars  must,  at  some  time,  have  sunk,  as 
shown  in  the  second  picture,  and  then  risen  again,  as  shown  in  the  third,  which  rep- 
resents them  as  they  stand  to-day. 

Another  interesting  thing  is  that  the  third  picture — observe — shows  a  volcano 
that  isn't  in  the  other  two.  Following  a  series  of  earthquake  shocks  in  1538  the 
earth  opened  and  out  popped  hot  stones  and  ashes  and  built  themselves  into  a 
small  volcano  right  before  everybody;  for  it  was  all  done  in  a  short  time,  and  you 
may  be  sure  the  frightened  people  kept  their  eyes  on  it,  and  they  named  it  Monte 
Nuovo,  which  is  Italian  for  "New  Mountain." 


1 6        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

crust  of  stone,  and  the  inside  of  the  earth  shrinking  all  the 
time  as  the  inside  of  the  apple  shrank  away  from  its  skin. 
The  rock  skin  would  wrinkle,  and  the  wrinkles,  rising  out 
of  the  seas  that  then  covered  it  everywhere,  would  make 
continents. 

"And  God  said,  Let  the  waters  under  the  heaven  be  gath- 
ered together  into  one  place,  and  let  the  dry  land  appear: 
and  it  was  so." 

According  to  the  planetessimal  theory  the  way  in  which 
the  seas  were  made  was  this: 

Owing  to  the  collision — the  "bang" — of  the  planetessi- 
mals  against  the  earth,  and  against  each  other  as  they  met 
at  the  "terminal  station,"  heat  was  generated.  The  com- 
pression, the  squeezing  together,  of  the  earth  from  its  own 
weight— the  gravity  pull  of  the  whole  mass  toward  the 
centre — generated  still  more  heat,  and  the  heat  and  pres- 
sure drove  the  gases  out  of  the  rock.  These  gases  included 
hydrogen  and  oxygen.  These  two  gases  cooling  and  com- 
bining themselves,  in  a  way  they  have,  became  water,  and 
there  were  other  gases,  such  as  nitrogen  and  carbon  gas, 
that  helped  to  make  the  air. 

WHEN   THE   SEAS   WERE  ALL  IN   THE   SKY 

At  first  the  water  was  in  the  form  of  dense  clouds  of 
overhanging  vapor  which,  growing  bigger  and  bigger, 
finally  fell  in  rain.  The  heat,  made  by  the  pressure  of  the 
outside  of  the  earth  toward  the  centre  as  the  earth  kept 
growing,  caused  volcanic  explosions.  But  there  were  far 
more  volcanoes  in  those  early  days  when  the  earth  was 
settling  down,  and  being  "settled  up,"  as  it  were,  by  these 
energetic  pioneers  in  the  fields  of  space — the  planetessimals 


IN  THE  BEGINNING  17 

— and  the  surface  became  pitted  with  craters.  In  these 
great  catch  basins  the  rain  was  stored,  and,  as  for  ages 
the  rain  kept  falling  faster  than  the  vapor  rose  from  the 
earth,  many  of  these  bodies  of  water  united,  and  so  formed 
the  lakes,  the  river  systems,  the  oceans,  and  the  seas. 

THE  FOUR  GREAT  FEATURES  OF  THE  BIBLE  STORY 

All  of  which,  while  it  differs  so  much  from  the  theory  of 
Laplace,  does  not  affect  the  Bible  outline  of  the  origin  of 
the  earth.  For  these  four  great  things  must  still  have 
been:  (i)  an  earth  without  form,  and  void;  (2)  a  great 
deep;  (3)  upon  its  face  darkness  from  the  continuing  masses 
of  black  rain-laden  clouds  which  overhung  it  and  shut 
out  the  sun;  (4)  the  final  dividing  up  of  supply  between  the 
vapor  of  the  clouds  ("the  waters  above  the  earth")  and 
"the  waters  upon  the  earth,"  so  that  at  last  the  dark 
cloud  curtain  disappeared,  and  the  sun  began  to  rule  the 
day.  "Let  there  be  light." 

But  good-by  to  Phaeton  and  the  story  of  an  original 
glowing  ball  which  cooled  off  on  the  outside.  If  the  earth 
grew  bit  by  bit  instead  of  being  whirled  off  in  one  fiery 
mass  by  the  sun  it  was  never  any  hotter  than  it  is  now,  if 
as  hot.  It  grew  hot  by  being  pressed  together  by  its  own 
weight,  and  by  the  blows  of  additional  little  worlds  as 
they  fell  upon  it. 

But  on  one  thing  everybody  agrees,  that  the  rocks,  as 
you  go  toward  the  earth's  centre,  have  been  and  still  are 
in  a  molten  state;  that  this  rock,  when  it  cools,  becomes 
granite,  all  full  of  little  crystals  like  a  lump  of  sugar,  and 
that  the  Granites  are  one  of  the  F.  F.  E.'s.1 
1  First  Families  on  Earth. 


1 8  STRANGE  ADVENTURES   OF  A  PEBBLE 

I,  as  you  see,  am  a  Granite.  So,  besides  going  through 
fire  and  water — yes,  and  ice,  as  you  will  learn — and  having 
many  strange  and  wearing  adventures  both  by  land  and 
sea — I'm ''awfully"  old.  Older  than  you  think.  I  looked 
it  up  in  the  family  record  called  the  "Geological  Column" 
— just  the  other  day.  That  column  gives  my  age  as 
"80  +."  This  means  I'm  80,000,000  years  old,  going  on 
81 !  (The  plus  sign,  in  geology  language,  means  "going 
on";  or,  "and  then  some,"  as  a  certain  slangful  high 
school  freshman  puts  it.) 

But  I  don't  think  I  show  my  age.     Do  you? 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

Who  wants  to  sit  and  be  talked  to  all  the  time  ?  When  boys  and 
girls  are  playing  games,  the  greatest  pleasure  is  in  taking  part,  and 
it's  the  same  way  in  the  Wonderland  of  Books.  Books  mean  most 
to  those  who  "get  into  the  game";  who  help  chase  after  the  an- 
swers to  things.  This  hunting  for  answers  up  and  down  among 
the  books  is  one  of  the  interesting  games  we're  going  to  play;  and 
those  of  you  who  don't  come  in  will  miss  a  lot  of  fun.  That's  all 
I've  got  to  say!  Let's  begin  like  this: 

In  the  Greek  myth  stories  what  else  was  Mr.  Apollo  supposed 
to  do  for  the  world  and  its  people  besides  turning  on  the  light  ?  1 
Why  doesn't  the  force  of  the  earth,  whirling  along  as  it  does  at 

19  miles  a  second,  cause  the  wind  to  blow  us  all  away?    (Earth.) 
What  is  the  difference  between  a  planet  and  a  sun? 

How  does  the  earth  compare  in  size  with  its  brother  planets  of 
the  sun  family? 

How  often  would  Christmas  come  around  if  we  lived  in  the 
moon? 

1  Answers  to  all  these  questions  at  the  ends  of  chapters  will  be  found 
in  books  you  can  easily  get  hold  of — encyclopaedias,  dictionaries,  and 
schoolbooks;  or  books  usually  found  in  home,  school,  or  public  libraries. 
Words  in  parenthesis  or  italics  indicate  the  headings  where  the  informa- 
tion referred  to  will  be  found. 


IN  THE  BEGINNING  19 

What  causes  different  phases  of  the  moon? 

Why  may  we  be  said  to  have  eclipses  of  the  moon  every  month  ? 

"Moon"  and  "month"  sound  a  good  deal  alike  when  you  come 
to  think  of  it.  Don't  you  wonder  why?  "Moon"  comes  from  a 
word  meaning  "to  measure."  You'll  find  the  rest  of  the  word- 
story  of  the  moon  in  any  dictionary  that  is  big  enough  to  tell  about 
the  origin  of  words. 

By  the  way — speaking  of  the  timekeepers  in  the  sky — don't  for- 
get to  look  up  the  lives  of  the  great  astronomers  mentioned  in  this 
chapter.  You  will  find,  among  other  things,  how  Galileo,  when 
only  eighteen  years  of  age,  helped  to  give  us  our  clocks  and  watches 
by  counting  his  pulse-beats  while  watching  a  hanging  lamp  swing 
back  and  forth  in  the  Cathedral  of  Pisa;  how  he  found  out  who 
"The  Man  in  the  Moon"  really  is  and  what  the  "Milky  Way"  is 
made  of;  how  he  invented  the  wonderful  glass  for  playing  hide  and 
seek  among  the  worlds,  and  with  it  found  four  moons  in  one  night ! 

Yes,  and  how  do  you  suppose  he  found  that  the  sun  is  going 
round  and  round  like  a  top,  just  as  the  earth  does?  It  was  the 
simplest  thing !  You'll  see ! 

Old  Father  Science  may  be  said  to  be  a  Santa  Claus  who  keeps 
a  curiosity-shop.  His  pack  is  not  only  full  of  curious  things  but 
he  is  always  "springing  surprises  on  us,"  as  our  High  School  Boy 
puts  it.  For  example,  one  of  the  most  curious  as  well  as  picturesque 
evidences  that  great  stretches  of  land  sink  under  the  sea  from  time 
to  time  is  furnished  by  the  English  swallows.  Like  many  other 
wealthy  people,  they  spend  their  winters  in  Algiers,  and  they  find 
their  way  over  the  Mediterranean,  not  by  any  lands  they  can  see 
between  coast  and  coast — for  there  are  none — but  by  lands  that 
used  to  be  there,  thousands  upon  thousands  of  years  ago. 

But  how  do  the  swallows  know?  They  don't.  Is  it  instinct? 
No.  (Whatever  instinct  is!)  Then  why  do  they  do  it?  Look  it 
up  and  you'll  see.1  Yes,  and  you'll  see  that  we  have  habits  that 
we  get  in  the  same  way;  our  habits  of  bowing,  for  example,  because 
it's  the  custom,  although  few  people  know  how  it  originated. 

1  "Colin  Clout's  Calendar,"  by  Grant  Allen. 


CHAPTER  II 

(FEBRUARY) 

Up  rose  the  wild  old  Winter  King 
And  shook  his  beard  of  snow; 
"  I  hear  the  first  young  harebell  ring, 
'Tis  time  for  me  to  go ! 
Northward  o'er  the  icy  rocks, 
Northward  o'er  the  Sea." 

— Leland. 

THE  WINTER  THAT  LASTED  ALL  SUMMER 

It's  been  just  one  thing  after  another  with  the  world 
and  me  ever  since  we  were  born.  First  it  was  the  fire, 
then  it  was  the  flood,  and  then  it  was  the  winter  that 
lasted  all  summer. 

Just  what  started  it  nobody  knows  to  this  day.  Some 
of  the  theories  have  been  that  this  particular  winter  stayed 
so  long  because  the  earth  wavered  on  its  axis,  or  that  it 
flew  the  track  for  a  while  and  got  too  far  away  from  the 
sun.  From  our  present  knowledge  of  the  machinery  of 
the  heavens  it  is  certain  that  the  earth's  motions  could 
not  vary  to  this  extent.  One  theory  that  appeals  to  many 
scientists  to-day  is  that  when  so  much  of  the  carbon  in 
the  air  went  into  the  making  of  our  coal  beds  the  earth 
became  unusually  cold,  and  so  snows  of  each  successive 
winter  kept  piling  up  instead  of  melting  away  during  the 
spring  and  summer.  When  there  is  plenty  of  this  gas  in 
the  air  the  earth's  heat  does  not  escape  so  fast.  But  with 
the  great  amount  of  carbon  taken  up  in  the  growth  of  the 


THE  WINTER   THAT  LASTED  ALL   SUMMER     21 


From  Norton's  "Elements  of  Geology."     By  permission  of  Ginn  and  Company 
WHEN   THE  ICE   SHEETS  COVERED   THE  LAND 


vast  forests  that  were  made  into  coal,  Mother  Earth's  air 
blanket  grew  thinner,  so  to  speak,  hence  the  long,  cold 
spell. 

But  whatever  caused  it  one  thing  is  certain;  it  was  a 
winter  that  beat  anything  the  oldest  inhabitant  ever  saw; 
for  the  cave  men  are  known  to  have  been  on  earth  during 
this  great  winter,  which  is  known  as  the  Ice  Age  or  the 
Glacial  Period.  A  great  big  ice  cap  reached  from  the 


22        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

North  Pole  far  down  into  the  Temperate  Zone  in  North 
America,  Europe,  and  Asia. 


FROM  THE  CAVEMAN'S  DIARY 

This  is  a  little  note  on  the  Ice  Age  from  the  caveman's  diary — the  picture  of  a 
mammoth  scratched  with  a  flint  on  a  mammoth's  tusk.  You  can  see  how  the 
artist  kept  trying  for  the  true  form  with  different  lines,  as  all  real  artists  do.  Art- 
ists don't  just  have  a  kind  of  sign  that  stands  for  the  thing — like  a  little  boy's  pic- 
ture of  a  man  that  he  always  makes  in  just  one  way.  Notice  the  action,  the  nat- 
ural motion  of  the  animal.  The  artist  means  to  say:  "This  is  the  way  he  came 
at  me." 


I.    THE  MILD  SPELL  AND  THE  MENAGERIES 

Just  before  this  dreadful  winter  set  in  we  had  a  long, 
open  spell;  about  a  million  years  or  so.  It  was  just  like 
summer  most  of  the  year  in  the  temperate  zone,  and  much 
warmer  than  it  is  to-day  in  what  is  now  the  land  of  the 
little  frosty  Eskimo. 

There  weren't  any  little  Eskimos  in  those  days.  In  fact, 
there  wasn't  much  of  anything  that  was  little.  Every- 
thing was  on  a  big  scale.  Think  of  a  mud-turtle  twelve 
feet  long !  He  was  all  of  that.  His  skull  alone  was  a  yard 
long  and  he  must  have  weighed  a  couple  of  tons.  He  had 
for  neighbors  in  the  bordering  swamps  a  number  of  huge 
creatures  that  one  wouldn't  care  to  meet. 


THE   WINTER  THAT  LASTED  ALL  SUMMER     23 

DREADFULNESS   OF   MR.    DINOSAUR 

The  Dinosaur,  for  instance.  His  name  means  "terrible 
reptile."  Some  members  of  the  family  were,  indeed,  terri- 
ble creatures.  Just  see  this  one  at  lunch,  Mr.  Ceratosau- 
rus.  He  has  the  head  of  a  queer  horse — "probably  a  night 
mare,"  says  the  High  School  Boy — teeth  and  tail  and  belly 
scales  like  a  crocodile,  a  comb  that  suggests  a  rooster's, 
legs  like  an  ostrich,  the  talons  of  an  eagle,  and  the  dainty 
little  arms  of  a  child.  What  a  combination !  Those  small 
fore  limbs  were  used  only  for  grasping.  On  his  hind  legs 
he  stalked  about,  seeking  whom  he  might  eat  for  dinner. 
He  was  about  fifty  feet  long  when  he  was  all  there.  At 


THE   KING  OF  THE   DINOSAURS  AT  LUNCHEON 

Contrast  the  little,  almost  dainty,  fore  limbs  with  the  enormous  legs.  You 
can't  help  thinking  of  the  arms  of  a  human  being,  can  you  ?  In  fact,  this  mixed-up 
creature  looks  as  if  nature  were  even  then  dreaming  of  man,  the  quadruped  who,  as 
some  Frenchman  said,  "took  to  walking  on  his  hind  legs  that  he  might  conquer 
the  world." 


24        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

this  late  day  scientists  usually  find  only  parts  of  him  scat- 
tered around. 

These  Dinosaurs  came  in  sizes  and  differed  considerably 
as  to  looks  and  eating  and  getting  about.  Some  were  as 
small  as  cats,  some  walked  on  four  legs,  some— like  the 
gentleman  at  lunch — walked  on  two.  Some  were  strict 
vegetarians,  while  others  would  have  nothing  but  meat. 
The  Big  Boys  of  the  whole  tribe  were  called  the  Sauropoda 
or  reptile-footed  Dinosaurs.  One  of  these,  whose  bones 
were  found  in  Colorado,  was  sixty-five  feet  long  when 
complete,  and  he  must  have  weighed  around  twenty  tons. 
His  family  nickname  was  Diplodocus  or  "Double  Beam," 
because  of  his  long,  beam-like  neck  and  his  long,  beam- 
like  tail. 

GENTLE   MR.    DIPLODOCUS   AND   HIS   WAYS 

Considering  the  reputation  some  of  the  other  Dinosaurs 
had  as  bad  citizens,  it  is  only  fair  to  the  Diplodocus  to  say 
that  he  was  really  a  gentle  creature,  and  never  disturbed 
anybody — unless  somebody  disturbed  him  first.  Then  he 
would  give  them  a  switch  with  that  tail  of  his,  and  it  was 
a  switching  they  were  not  likely  to  forget.  But  his  great 
delight — indeed,  his  main  occupation  in  life — was  to  sit 
deep  in  the  water,  prop  himself  up  with  his  great  long  tail, 
like  a  kangaroo,  with  just  his  head  out,  like  a  turtle  in  a 
pond.  Then  he  would  strain  little  water  bugs  and  similar 
things  through  his  teeth.  He  got  his  meals  in  this  way, 
very  much  as  the  whales  do  now. 

And  elephants !  You  ought  to  have  seen  some  of  the 
members  of  the  elephant  family  that  arrived  after  the  rep- 
tile age,  the  mammoths,  for  instance.  These  huge  creatures 


THE  WINTER  THAT  LASTED   ALL  SUMMER     25 

and  many  other  strange  animals  were  all  over  the  place.  It 
was  just  like  a  circus  day  everywhere  all  the  time.  Such 
elephants  don't  travel  with  circuses  now,  of  course,  because 
they  were  all  killed  during  that  dreadful  winter,  but  you 


From  the  mural  painting  by  Charles  R.  Knight  in  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History 
WHEN   ELEPHANTS   WORE   UNDERCLOTHES 

This  painting  on  the  walls  of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History  in  New 
York  City  shows  herds  of  reindeer  and  mammoths  in  the  Ice  Age.  They  didn't 
mind  the  cold  as  elephants  do  to-day,  because  of  their  woolly  underclothes.  They 
fed  on  the  shoots  and  cones  of  those  firs  and  pines.  The  reindeer,  then  as  now, 
ate  the  lichens  we  call  "reindeer  moss,'  first  scraping  away  the  snow  with  their 
feet. 


can  see  them  in  museums,  all  dressed  in  their  skeletons 
and  neatly  held  together  with  wires. 

HOW   THE   MAMMOTHS   PASSED   AWAY 

Picture  herds  of  these  mammoths  huddled  together  like 
sheep  in  dark  ravines,  and  the  blinding  snow,  swept  down 
by  the  winds,  burying  them  deeper  and  deeper.  That 
was  how  they  died.  You'll  notice  that  they  wore  their 
hair  long,  while  the  elephants  we  see  in  the  circuses  or  at 
the  zoo  have  hardly  any  hair  at  all.  This  long  hair  was 
part  of  their  winter  clothing.  Under  it  they  wore  a  close 
fleece.  But  this  winter  was  so  severe  and  it  lasted  so  long 
that  even  their  heavy  woollen  underwear  couldn't  save 
them.  Sometimes  there  would  be  a  thaw,  but  this  was 
only  on  the  surface  and  helped  turn  the  snow  into  ice. 


26        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

And  winter  piled  on  winter  and  on  the  bodies  of  the  mam- 
moths until  they  were  buried  under  tons  and  tons  of  snow 
and  ice. 

HOW   THE   SNOW   CHANGED   ITSELF   INTO   ICE 

You  know  snow  will  get  solid,  like  ice,  where  it  is  undei 
pressure,  and  it  will  make  hard  cakes  and  ice  balls  under 
your  shoes.  Well,  this  snow  of  the  long  winter  just 
" packed  its  own  self"  (as  a  small  boy  might  say)  into  ice. 
It  did  this  by  piling  on  and  piling  on.  The  weight  of  the 
snow  above  and  behind,  in  the  spaces  between  the  moun- 
tains and  in  the  mountain  valleys,  pressed  with  enormous 
force  on  the  snow  below  and  in  front. 

Then  what  do  you  think  this  ice  did?  It  began  to 
move.  And  of  all  the  things  it  did  from  then  on ! 

II.     MARVELLOUS   CHANGES  IN  THE  OLD  HOME  PLACE 

Did  you  notice  those  scratches  on  my  face?  The  ice 
did  that.  But,  of  course,  that's  nothing  in  itself.  And, 
besides,  I'm  not  one  to  complain,  as  you  know.  I  only 
speak  of  it  to  show  what  big  things  may  be  back  of  little 
ones;  how  much  you  can  learn  from  the  study  of  so  com- 
mon a  thing  as  a  little  pebble.  For  the  very  same  ice  fields 
that  scratched  the  faces  of  little  pebbles  like  me  deepened 
the  gorges  and  canyons  among  the  mountains  and  shaved 
the  crowns  of  the  old  ones — Bald  Mountain,  in  the  Adi- 
rondacks,  for  example.  They  carried  off  good  farming 
soil  by  the  thousands  of  acres  from  one  place  and  piled  it 
in  another;  they  shoved  the  Mississippi  River  back  and 
forth;  in  fact,  turned  many  streams  out  of  their  courses — 


THE  WINTER  THAT  LASTED  ALL  SUMMER     27 

some  of  them  the  other  end  to,  so  that  they  now  flow  south 
where  they  used  to  flow  north.  They  took  old  river  sys- 
tems apart,  and  with  the  pieces  made  new  ones — the  big 
Missouri  for  one.  They  set  Niagara  Falls  up  in  business; 


rom  Norton's  "Elements  of  Geology."    By  permission  of 
Cinn  and  Company 

THE  LITTLE  MOUNTAIN  IN  THE  BIG  CITY 

In  one  of  the  parks  in  New  York  City  you  can  see  this  illustration  of  how  the 
glaciers  rounded  off  the  mountain-tops. 


got  all  the  waterfalls  ready  that  are  now  turning  the  wheels 
of  New  England  factories,  and  even  put  in  great  water 
storage  systems  that  remind  one  of  the  Salt  River  irriga- 
tion works,  with  their  big  Roosevelt  dam  in  Arizona,  or 
of  the  reservoirs  which  England  built  in  the  Nile.  Lakes 
in  river  systems  act  as  reservoirs,  you  know,  and  make 
them  flow  more  evenly,  thus  keeping  the  power  of  falls 
more  uniform,  as  in  the  case  of  Niagara,  and  making  a 
uniform  depth  of  water  for  vessels,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  River.  The  Great  Lakes  do  both  of  these 
useful  things. 

There  were  three  great  centres — union  stations,  we  might 


28   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


This  huge  mass  in  the  Canadian  Rockies  is  known  as  the  Beehive  Mountain. 
Originally  a  cliff,  it  was  reshaped  by  the  glaciers.  Can't  you  tell  from  the  picture 
which  was  the  face  of  the  cliff,  and  from  the  information  in  the  text  which  side  the 
glacier  climbed  up  and  on  which  side  it  tobogganed  down? 


call  them — from  which  the  ice  trains  moved  out.  These 
were  the  points  at  which  the  ice  gathered  to  the  greatest 
depth,  the  tops  of  the  great  snow  banks.  .  One,  as  you  see 
by  our  Ice  Age  map,  was  away  over  on  the  Pacific  Coast 
of  Canada.  It  is  called  the  Cordilleran  Centre,  from  the 
vast  mountain  system  of  which  it  is  a  part.  Over  what  is 
now  the  province  of  Keewatin,  Canada,  was  the  Keewatin 
Centre,  while  the  Labrador  Centre  stood  guard  over  the 
highlands  of  Labrador.  The  ice  from  the  Keewatin  and 
Labrador  fields,  you  notice,  flowed  farthest  to  the  south. 
The  Keewatin  ice  giant  travelled  away  down  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley  as  far  as  the  mouth  of  what  is  now  the  Mis- 


THE   WINTER  THAT  LASTED  ALL   SUMMER     29 

souri,  while  the  giant  from  Labrador  got  nearly  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Ohio. 

The  reason  Old  Mr.  Labrador  didn't  reach  the  mouth 
of  the  Ohio — as  you  can  easily  guess — was  -that  he  didn't 


THE   OLD   MEN  OF  THE   MOUNTAIN  AT  THEIR   WORK 

Don't  you  always  think  of  a  glacier  as  a  big  white  thing?  So  it  is  when  it  starts 
to  work,  but  after  it  has  ploughed  down  the  mountain  valleys  and  gathered  up  a 
lot  of  soil — such  as  the  heaps  you  see  in  the  foreground  of  the  picture — it  begins 
to  look  as  black  as  a  coal-heaver !  It  gets  cracked  up  into  all  sorts  of  odd  shapes, 
too.  Doesn't  that  figure  near  the  centre  look  like  some  queer  kind  of  old  elephant, 
with  a  fierce  white  eye  (it's  a  big  stone)  and  a  snarl  on  his  face? 

go  far  enough,  but  could  you  answer  a  conundrum  like 
this: 

"Why  was  Mr.  Keewatin  bound  to  reach  the  mouth  of 
the  Missouri  and  stay  there  for  awhile  no  matter  how  far 
he  went?" 

The  answer  is  easy,  when  you  know  it.  Because  he 
made  the  Missouri  himself.  What  we  now  know  as  the 
Missouri  River  was  made  of  other  rivers  that  the  big  ice 
sheet  turned  around  as  it  advanced  and  of  the  water  from 


30        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  ice  as  the  glacier  melted  its  way  back  home.  It  was 
something  like  Mary  and  the  little  lamb,  all  the  time,  so 
long  as  Mr.  Keewatin  travelled  south;  for  everywhere  he 
went  the  Missouri  was  sure  to  go,  because  he  kept  push- 
ing it  ahead  of  him. 

HOW   THE    OLD   MEN   PUSHED   THE   MISSISSIPPI   ABOUT 

As  the  ice  sheets  pushed  into  its  valleys,  now  from  the 
northeast  and  now  from  the  northwest,  the  Mississippi 
River  was  pushed  back  and  forth  as  if  it  were  a — well,  as 
if  it  weren't  anything !  It  is  known  that  the  Mississippi 
was  pushed  out  of  bed  by  this  burly  guest  from  the  north 
because  its  former  channels  have  been  traced  along  the 
old  ice  fronts. 

In  one  part  of  its  course  the  Mississippi  actually  got  mis- 
placed, and  hasn't  found  its  way  back  to  its  old  bed  to 
this  day.  This  you  can  see  at  Fort  Snelling,  Minnesota. 
At  that  point  the  Minnesota  River  flows  in  the  Missis- 
sippi's old  valley — which  is  plainly  too  big  for  it — while 
above  Fort  Snelling 'the  Mississippi  is  forced  to  squeeze 
its  way  through  a  stingy  little  gorge  that  used  to  belong  to 
the  Minnesota,  and  I'm  sure  would  be  plenty  big  enough 
for  it  now.  It's  like  the  story  of  a  changeling  baby  in  a 
fairy  tale,  isn't  it?  Only  in  the  fairy  tale  the  changeling 
always  gets  back  to  his  old  home,  while  the  misplaced 
Mississippi  in  Minnesota  doesn't. 

But  the  glaciers  made  it  up  to  the  Mississippi,  in  a  way, 
for  this  rude  jostling.  They  not  only  left  it  an  enormous 
extra  supply  of  water  as  they  melted  back  home — what 
would  a  river  be  without  water? — but  they  actually  took 
some  smaller  rivers  away  from  the  St.  Lawrence  and  made 


THE  WINTER   THAT  LASTED  ALL   SUMMER     31 

them  do  their  pouring  into  the  Mississippi  system.  Al- 
though they  didn't  owe  the  Ohio  any  apology  for  any- 
thing, so  far  as  I  know,  they  did  the  same  thing  for  it, 
just  to  be  good  fellows,  I  suppose.  All  the  rivers  that 
now  empty  into  the  Ohio  above  Cincinnati  used  to  flow 
into  Lake  Erie,  but  the  glaciers  turned  them  south  and 
they've  gone  on  obediently  flowing  that  way  ever  since. 


A    PLOWMAN    WHO    PLOWED    THE   FARMS    AWAY 

That  these  giants  of  the  north,  although  they  must 
have  looked  as  cold  as  ice,  really  had  good  hearts  is  shown 
by  the  way  Old  Mr.  Labrador  treated  New  England  when 
he  went  Down  East.  New  England  was  at  that  time 
covered  with  good,  deep,  rich  soil,  the  decay  of  the  granite 
rocks  that  had  been  basking  in  the  sun  for  ages  and  grow- 
ing early  grass  and  vegetables  for  the  live  stock  of  those 
days.  Then  along  came  Old  Mr.  Labrador  with  his  plow, 
and  set  to  work.  But  he  plowed  so  deep  that  he  plowed 
all  the  farms  away!  Of  the  gigantic  furrows  that  he 
turned  a  lot  of  the  slices  fell  over  into  New  York  State; 
but  some,  I'm  sorry  to  say,  dropped  off  into  the  sea.  This 
left  New  England  in  a  bad  way,  so  far  as  prizes  for  farm 
produce  at  the  country  fairs  a  few  thousand  years  later 
were  concerned. 

But  then  what  do  you  suppose  Mr.  Labrador  did,  the 
good  old  soul?  He  took  a  lot  of  streams  that  had  been 
flowing  north,  blocked  them  up  with  pebbles  and  dirt, 
making  them  turn  right  around  and  flow  south,  so  that  in 
climbing  down  from  the  rocks  in  these  new  unworn  beds 
they  made  waterfalls.  And  it  was  from  the  power  made 


32        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

by  its  waterfalls,  you  know,  as  your  geography  tells  you, 
that  New  England  grew  to  be  a  great  "  manu-factur-ing " 
section. 


Courtesy  of  "  The  Scientific  American." 
HOW  THE  OLD  MEN  OF  THE  MOUNTAIN  COME  TO  SCHOOL 

You  can  have  glaciers  like  this  right  in  the  schoolroom,  and  icebergs,  too,  by 
means  of  which  the  Old  Men  of  the  Mountain  went  to  sea.  Both  the  iceberg 
and  its  parent,  the  glacier,  are  made  by  the  crumpling  of  white  paper  around  books 
or  any  other  support.  Cliffs  of  dark-brown  grocery-paper  bound  the  deep  gully 
through  which  the  glacier  has  crept  down  to  the  sea.  The  sea-waves  are  made  with 
crumpled  paper  of  appropriate  colors.  (Think  what  lovely  green  waves  you  could 
make  with  a  piece  of  old  window-shade !)  Pieces  of  white  string  make  good 
breakers,  and  powdered  chalk  can  easily  be  made  to  turn  to  snow. 

Of  course  I'm  only  joking  when  I  speak  of  these  glaciers 
as  if  they  had  minds  like  the  rest  of  us,  but  really  it  almost 
seems  true,  when  you  come  to  think  of  all  the  things  they 
did.  Take  these  New  England  waterfalls,  for  instance. 
The  glacier  not  only  made  them  by  turning  the  rivers 
around,  but,  as  the  ice  melted  away  toward  the  north  the 


THE   WINTER   THAT  LASTED   ALL  SUMMER     33 


THE  GRAY  TEMPLE  OF  THE  WINDS 

This  gray  mass  of  sandstone  on  the  Wisconsin  prairies  is  a  piece  of  architecture 
with  which  man  has  had  nothing  whatever  to  do.  It  is  all  the  work  of  the  winds 
and  the  rains;  of  the  sea  and  of  rivers;  of  water  and  rivers  of  ice;  and  the  vertical 
division  of  the  rock  into  joints  by  the  shrinking  of  the  earth.  The  detail,  the 
rounding  of  the  pillars,  and  so  on,  is  largely  the  work  of  the  winds  and  their  helpers, 
the  frosts,  the  rains,  and  the  wind-blown  sand. 

The  original  mass  was  carved  out  of  a  big  rock-bed  by  flowing  rivers  that  had 
their  course  around  it  on  either  side.  Then  one  of  these  rivers  was  dammed  by 
ice  in  the  days  of  the  glaciers  and  a  lake  was  formed  in  which  this  rock  mass  stood 
as  an  island.  The  level  prairie  you  now  see  around  it  was  made  by  the  sand  and 
gravel  deposited  in  the  bottom  of  this  lake.  The  vertical  divisions  are  cracks  in 
the  earth  crust  called  "joints."  The  horizontal  divisions  are  due  in  part  to  this 
cracking  process  and  in  part  to  "stratification,"  the  layer-like  arrangement  of  the 
rocks  when  laid  in  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  as  explained  in  Chapter  X.  The  "cornice" 
is  a  layer  of  harder  rock  which  has  yielded  less  to  nature's  tools. 


land  rose  again,  being  relieved  of  the  enormous  weight. 
And  in  rising  the  sloping  land  not  only  gave  more  force 
to  the  new  southward  flowing  streams  but  made  it  more 
sure  that  they  should  go  on  flowing  south.  As  if  the 
glaciers  said: 


34        STRANGE  ADVENTURES   OF  A  PEBBLE 

"I've  turned  you  around  and  I  want  you  to  stay  turned 
around.  And  I  want  you  to  go  on  running  south  and 
dropping  over  the  falls  until  the  people  of  New  England 
come  down  to  Lowell  and  Manchester  and  those  places 
and  get  ready  to  put  you  to  work." 

Anyhow,  that's  just  what  happened.  You  can  look  at 
it  any  way  you  want  to. 

It  was  in  much  the  same  way  that  Mr.  Labrador  and  his 
friend  Keewatin  did  that  great  piece  of  engineering  at  the 
Great  Lakes.  Where  the  Great  Lakes  are  now  there  used 
to  be  rivers  that  were  a  part  of  the  St.  Lawrence  system. 
Then  along  came  the  ice  sheets,  dammed  up  these  rivers, 
just  as  small  boys  dam  up  roadside  rivulets  after  a  rain, 
and  so  made  big  lakes,  as  the  boys  make  little  lakes  in 
these  streamlets.  But  this  wasn't  all.  The  glaciers  evi- 
dently wanted  these  to  be  nice  big  lakes  that  would  stay 
there  for  people  to  ride  on  in  the  beautiful  summer  weather, 
and  to  help  haul  coal  and  iron  ore  and  other  kinds  of 
freight — Michigan  peaches  and  everything.  For  look 
what  else  they  did.  With  pebbles  and  big  stones  and  dirt 
they  built  the  lake  walls  higher,  and  dug  deep  basins  for 
them  out  of  the  solid  rock.  Then  they  poured  in  a  lot  of 
extra  water — beautiful  blue  water,  tons  and  tons  of  it — 
and  went  back  home. 

The  digging  into  the  rock  was  done  with  big  chisels — 
what  a  carpenter  would  call  "round-nosed"  chisels.  These 
chisels,  of  course,  were  made  of  ice.  They  were  what  are 
called  the  "tongues"  or  "lobes"  of  glaciers.  As  a  glacier 
flows  along — always  on  some  down  grade — there  are  por- 
tions of  it — those  long  lobes  or  tongues — that  move  on 
ahead  of  the  main  mass.  This  is  because  those  parts  of 


THE   WINTER  THAT  LASTED  ALL  SUMMER    35 


THE  THOUSAND-YEAR  CLOCK  AT  NIAGARA 

You've  heard  of  eight-day  clocks  and  clocks  that  have  to  be  wound  only  once  a 
year,  but  here  is  a  clock  that  was  wound  up  several  thousand  years  ago  and  is  still 
going  beautifully !  In  placing  the  wondrous  waterfall  in  Niagara  River  the 
glaciers  also  started  a  kind  of  water-clock  by  which  to  record — for  those  who  would 
take  the  trouble  to  study  it  out — how  long  ago  it  was  the  glaciers  visited  us.  Ow- 
ing to  the  constant  wearing  away  of  the  base  of  the  falls,  by  the  water  grinding  the 
pebbles  against  it,  great  blocks  like  the  one  here  shown  (known  as  "The  Rock  of 
Ages")  come  tumbling  down.  So  the  falls  are  constantly  retreating  up-stream, 
and  the  distance  from  where  they  once  stood  to  where  they  are  now  gives  a  rough 
idea  of  the  time  that  has  passed  since  the  Old  Men  of  the  Mountain  set  them  np 
in  business — about  25,000  years. 


the  ice  sheet  strike  a  steeper  bit  of  land  than  the  rest  of 
it,  so  how  could  they  help  moving  faster? 

The  fronts  of  these  lobes  are  rounded  like  the  waves 
flowing  up  a  beach,  or  syrup  travelling  over  pancakes  on 
a  cold  winter  morning.  The  reason  of  this  roundness  is 
that  the  centres  of  these  lobes  of  ice  or  water  travel  fastest 
because  the  mass  on  either  side  furnishes  a  kind  of  ball- 
bearing for  the  central  part. 

But  this  wasn't  all.     At  the  very  same  time,  by  the  very 


36        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

same  act,  Labrador,  Keewatin  &  Co.  set  Niagara  Falls  up 
in  business.  In  those  days  there  was  a  Niagara  river  but 
no  Niagara  Falls;  at  least  not  the  one  we  know  to-day. 
The  ice  filled  the  Ontario  Valley  so  that  the  streams  flow- 


A   BIRD'S-EYE  VIEW  OF  NIAGARA 

This  is  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  Niagara  region.  Where  the  river  crosses  a  bed 
of  limestone  below  Buffalo,  and  again  where  it  crosses  another  just  above  the  crest 
of  the  falls,  some  of  the  rock  has  been  dissolved  away,  thus  making  it  rougher,  so 
that  slight  rapids  have  formed.  Then  conies  the  mighty  plunge,  after  which  the 
water  flows  through  a  gorge  for  about  seven  miles.  Where  the  gorge  bends  abruptly 
at  right  angles  is  the  great  eddy  called  "The  Whirlpool." 


ing  into  it  had  to  turn  around  and  flow  south.  The 
Niagara  River  was  one  of  these  streams.  Then,  as  the  ice 
melted,  it  poured  loads  of  extra  water  into  Lake  Erie,  so 
that  it  was  some  30  feet  higher  than  it  is  at  present  and 
began  draining  out  through  the  new  Niagara  River,  over 
the  rocks  that  make  the  falls. 


NATURE   IS   THE  ART   OF   GOD 

"Nature,"  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  so  finely  said,  "is  the 
art  of  God."     And  nowhere  is  this  art  more  striking  in  its 


THE   WINTER   THAT  LASTED  ALL  SUMMER     37 

beauty  than  in  the  work  done  by  the  glaciers.  Those 
wonderful  falls  and  the  blue  inland  seas  we  call  the  Great 
Lakes,  and  thousands  of  smaller  lakes  scattered  all  over 
where  the  glaciers  came,  are  only  a  part  of  this  art  work. 


AND  TO  THINK   WE   DID   IT  ALL! 


The  main  ice  sheets,  you  notice,  didn't  reach  down  among 
the  mountains  of  California,  but  these  mountains  had 
small  glaciers  of  their  own  in  those  days,  just  as  they  have 
now.  Only  they  were  much  larger  then  because,  as  we 
have  seen,  it  was  such  a  snowy  time  all  over  the  northern 
world.  Listen  to  what  these  home-made  glaciers  of  Cali- 
fornia did,  and  listen  to  how  John  Muir  tells  it: 

"It  is  hard,"  he  says,  "without  long  and  loving  study, 
to  realize  how  great  was  the  work  done.  Before  the  gla- 
ciers came,  the  range" — he  is  speaking  of  the  Sierras — 
"was  comparatively  simple;  one  vast  wave  of  stone  in 
which  a  thousand  mountains,  domes,  canyons,  ridges,  and 
so  forth  lay  concealed."  To  carve  them  out  of  the  stone 
"nature  chose  for  a  tool,  not  the  earthquake  or  the  light- 
ning, but  the  tender  snow  flowers,  noiselessly  falling 


38        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

through  unnumbered  centuries.  The  snowflakes  said, 
'Come,  we  are  feeble;  let  us  help  one  another.  Marching 
in  close,  deep  ranks  let  us  roll  away  the  stones  from  these 
mountain  sepulchres,  and  set  the  landscape  free.'" 

It  is  evident  that  this  was  all  in  the  Great  Plan  of  things. 
For  the  rocks  had  to  be  of  a  certain  kind  and  laid  in  a 
certain  way  for  the  little  members  of  this  art  society  of 
the  sky  to  work  these  landscapes  out.  And  the  rocks  were 
so  made  and  laid  when  they  were  at  least  a  mile  below  the 
surface  on  which  the  glaciers  set  to  work. 

"It  was  while  these  features  were  taking  form  in  the 
depths  of  the  range,  the  particles  of  the  rocks  marching 
to  their  appointed  places  in  the  dark,  that  the  particles  of 
icy  vapor  in  the  sky,  marching  to  the  same  music,  assem- 
bled to  bring  them  to  the  light.  Then,  after  their  grand 
task  was  done,  these  bands  of  snow  flowers,  the  mighty 
glaciers,  were  melted  and  removed,  as  if  of  no  more  impor- 
tance than  dew  destined  to  last  but  an  hour."1 
1  "The  Mountains  of  California."  John  Muir. 


THE   WINTER   THAT  LASTED   ALL   SUMMER     39 


HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

How  do  you  suppose  warm  water — of  all  things! — could  have 
caused  the  Ice  Age?  This  theory  is  one  that  was  offered  by  a 
very  eminent  geologist,  Doctor  Shaler,  of  Harvard.1 

In  the  same  book  he  also  explains  how  the  old  men  of  the  moun- 
tain may  have  helped  to  make  New  York  City,  although  they  were 
never  there  in  their  lives,  of  course. 

When  you  take  up  geology  as  a  special  study — I  hope  you  will — 
you  will  find  that  there  were  five  particularly  heavy  snowfalls 
during  the  long  winter.  But  why  not  look  it  up  now?  If  you 
can't  do  it  just  get  somebody  else  in  the  family  to  do  it  for  you. 
Where  is  father's  college  geology?  In  the  last  two  of  these  storms 
Mr.  Labrador  rode  all  over  New  England  and  clear  to  the  sea, 
where  he  amused  himself  for  a  long  time  by  setting  icebergs  drift- 
ing out  over  the  Atlantic. 

How  do  they  know  about  the  icebergs?  That's  one  of  the  inter- 
est,ing  things  the  books  tell. 

These  books  also  show  how  Niagara  Falls  acts  as  a  great  time- 
clock  that  tells  how  long  ago  it  was  since  the  glaciers  visited  us. 
According  to  the  record  on  the  "dial  "  it  was  somewhere  between 
20,000  and  30,000  years  ago.  (Of  course  this  isn't  what  we  would 
call  very  close  timekeeping;  but  remember,  in  the  long  story  of 
the  earth  even  a  hundred  thousand  years  is  a  mere  tick  of  the 
clock.) 

And  the  way  this  clock  is  running  down  shows  we're  going  to 
lose  Niagara  Falls  in  the  course  of  time.  All  falls  finally  run  down 
in  the  same  way.  This  is  the  rather  flippant  way  my  high  school 
friend  put  it: 

"First,  the  water  falls  over  the  waterfall;  then  the  waterfall 
falls,  piece  by  piece,  and  the  water  falls  no  more.  It's  a  sad  case." 

(You'll  see  what  he  meant,  quickly  enough,  when  you  read  up 
on  waterfalls.  Your  geography  tells,  doesn't  it?  Well,  then,  of 
course  you  know.) 

But  here's  a  question  you  can  answer  right  out  of  this  chapter. 
Which  one  of  the  illustrations  shows  that  the  mammoths  and  the 
cave  men  lived  on  earth  at  the  same  time? 

That  the  mammoth  was  seen  in  the  flesh  by  those  remarkable 

1  "Nature  and  Man  in  America." 


40        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

artists  of  the  caves  is  plain,  but  what  do  you  say  to  seeing  a  mam- 
moth in  the  flesh  in  these  days?  Remember  the  mammoths  have 
all  been  dead  for  thousands  of  years.  (Elephant,  Mammoth, 
Siberia.} 

What  is  there  about  the  climate  of  Siberia  that  made  this  strange 
thing  possible? 

How  did  the  mammoth  get  his  name?  Was  it  because  he  was 
so  big — such  a  "mammoth"  creature?  1 

How  did  the  mammoths  compare  in  size  with  the  elephants  of 
to-day? 

Which  was  the  bigger,  the  mastodon  or  the  mammoth  ? 

Did  we  ever  have  mastodons  in  North  America?  And  were 
there  mammoths,  too? 

If  you  want  to  see  more  about  what  the  travelling  menageries 
of  the  days  before  the  Ice  Age  looked  like  hunt  up  these  words: 
Archelon,  dinosaur,  ceratosaurus,  diplodocus,  stegosaurus,  triceratops. 

See  what  the  geography  says  about  the  manufacturing  towns 
of  New  England  and  how  many  of  them  have  water  power. 

In  that  remarkable  little  book  by  Grant  Allen2  already  referred 
to  in  the  H.  &  S.  at  the  end  of  Chapter  I,  on  page  139,  you  will 
find  what  the  Ice  Age  had  to  do  with  the  fact  that  the  rabbits  of 
Canada  and  our  northern  border  States  wear  white  clothes  in 
winter,  while  Brer  Rabbit  of  our  Middle  and  Southern  States  keeps 
his  yellow-brown  suit  on  all  the  year. 

And  on  page  204  how  a  little  plant,  whose  old  home  was  in  the 
Arctics,  got  stranded  on  an  English  hilltop  among  the  mossy 
clefts  of  weathered  granite,  and  how  the  beautiful  lady  who  has  a 
little  flower  named  after  her  slipper  (we  all  know  that  slipper)  is 
leaving  England  because  the  climate  is  too  mild ! 

1  Mammoth,  you  will  find,  comes  from  a  word  meaning  "earth." 
It  didn't  mean  "big"  at  all  at  first.     One  of  the  most  lovable  traits 
of  a  good  dictionary,  I  think,  is  that  it  tells  so  many  interesting  little 
stories  like  that  about  the  early  life  of  words;  of  their  days  of  adven- 
ture, so  to  speak,  when  there  was  no  telling  how  they  would  come  out. 

2  "Colin  Clout's  Calendar." 


THE  SUMMER  PASTURES  ON  THE  JUNGFRAU 

Here  are  some  of  those  Swiss  cattle  in  their  summer  pastures.  Doesn't  look 
much  like  summer,  does  it?  But  there's  one  thing  besides  the  cattle  that  tells.  See 
that  stretch  of  snow  all  by  itself?  That's  a  snow-bank  which  has  escaped  the 
summer  sun  because  it  is  protected  by  the  ravine  in  which  it  lies.  All  around  it 
the  ground  is  bare  of  snow. 


CHAPTER  III 

(MARCH) 

With  rushing  winds  and  gloomy  skies 
The  dark  and  stubborn  Winter  dies; 
Far  off,  unseen,  Spring  faintly  cries, 
Bidding  her  earliest  child  arise. 

— Bayard  Taylor. 

THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SPRING  AND  THE  LANDS 
OF  ETERNAL  SNOW 

And  that's  how  the  Old  Men  of  the  Mountain  visited 
us  in  the  Ice  Age  and  what  they  did  and  how  they  did  it. 
But  now  that  they  have  all  been  back  home  so  long  don't 
41 


42        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

you  think  it  would  be  nice  and  polite  to  return  the  call- 
especially  when  you  remember  all  they  did  for  us,  making 
beautiful  lakes  and  rivers  and  waterfalls  and  mountain 
scenery  ? 

I.    SPRINGTIME  IN  THE  ALPS 

The  best  time  to  do  this  would  be  in  the  spring,  because 
then  the  kingdom  of  the  glaciers  is  most  beautiful,  and  the 
spirit  of  a  glorious  new  world,  just  waking  up,  is  abroad 
everywhere.  The  glaciers  themselves  seem  to  feel  so  good 
about  it  that  they  start  to  sing.  And  like  the  birds,  their 
joyous  springtime  mood  responds  to  the  quick  changes  of 
sun  and  shade.  In  our  own  land  when  the  sky  grows 
cloudy,  even  for  a  short  time  as  you  may  have  noticed, 
birds  stop  singing.  Then  when  the  sky  clears  they  start 
up  again.  But,  up  here  in  the  Alps  in  the  spring  when 
the  birds  are  singing  among  the  mountain  meadows,  the 
glaciers,  at  whose  feet  these  meadows  lie,  do  the  very  same 
thing.  The  songs  of  the  birds  are  various,  and  the  song  of 
the  same  bird  will  differ  at  different  times  of  day,  but  the 
song  of  the  glacier  is  always  the  same — a  pleasant  dreamy 
tune  between  the  murmur  of  little  voices  and  the  tinkle  of 
distant  bells. 

The  very  rocks  that  the  glacier  carries  on  its  back  seem 
to  catch  the  spirit  of  the  springtime;  for,  when  the  weather 
is  bright,  they  go  strolling.  And  when  they  do  they  remind 
us  a  little  of  that  painting  by  Franz  Hals,  "The  Laughing 
Cavalier,"  for  they  apparently  wear  a  big  broad-brimmed 
hat  cocked  jauntily  on  one  side. 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE   SPRING  43 


UP  WHERE  THE   GLACIERS   GROW 

Here  we  are,  looking  down  on  the  roof  of  the  Alps — from  a  flying-machine,  let 
us  say.  The  sky-line  used  to  be  more  like  the  ridge  of  a  house,  straight  across. 
In  the  course  of  the  ages  the  glaciers  and  the  weather  have  cut  down  the  softer 
rock,  leaving  those  peaks.  At  the  top  are  the  snow-fields.  Farther  down  the 
glaciers  begin  to  form.  Still  farther  down,  where  the  glaciers  have  begun  to  melt, 
you  can  see  a  stream— its  waters  have  taken  white  in  the  picture  because  of  the 
foam  and  the  ground-up  rock  in  it  called  "rock  flour" — falling  into  the  woods  be- 
low, the  "timber  line"  of  your  geography.  Ruskin  has  a  wonderful  word-picture 
of  these  mountain  streams  in  his  "Modern  Painters."  The  index  of  any  edition 
will  tell  you  where. 


THE  MAN   WHO  DISCOVERED   THE  ICE  AGE 

The  Alps  are  the  most  famous  of  all  the  homes  of  the 
glaciers,  not  only  because  of  the  great  number  of  the  gla- 
ciers and  the  beauty  of  the  scenery,  but  because  it  was  in 
the  Alps  that  Agassiz,  living  in  a  little  stone  hut  among 
the  mountains,  studied  the  glaciers  and  their  ways  and 
proved  that  it  was  these  strange  creatures  of  snow  and 
ice  that  had  come  down  during  the  Ice  Age  and  worked 
such  marvellous  changes  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  In  the 
Alps,  just  as  Muir  found  them  doing  among  the  glaciers  of 


44        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Alaska,  the  flowers  bloom  at  the  very  edge  of  the  snow 
line.  And  they  come  on  much  more  rapidly  than  they  do 
in  temperate  climates.  As  fast  as  the  snow  melts  back 
blossoms  just  cover  the  meadows  thick  with  the  deepest, 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ 
The  great  teacher  who  discovered  the  Ice  Age. 

richest  colors — blue,  red,  white,  yellow,  purple,  and  every 
shade  of  these.  Some  of  these  flowers  are  as  pure  white  as 
the  snows.  The  queen  of  beauty  among  them  all,  many 
think,  is  the  Alpine  rose.  In  that  pure,  clear  air  its  color 
seems  actually  to  glow  like  the  famous  peak,  the  Jungfrau, 
at  sunrise. 

One  little  flower  is  in  such  a  hurry,  so  afraid  it  will  miss 
the  first  May  party,  that  it  blooms  under  the  ice  and  melts 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE   SPRING  45 

its  own  way  right  up  through.  Then  it  calls  to  the  bees 
and  the  butterflies,  in  the  way  that  flowers  have: 

"  Good  morning !  It's  spring,  and  here  I  am  again  and 
how  do  you  do  ?  Come  and  kiss  me ! " 

The  soldanella  grows  among  the  thick  pebble  beds  and 
the  big  boulders  right  on  the  edges  of  the  glaciers.  It  is  a 
member  of  the  primrose  family.  It  may  be  pink,  white, 
or  blue.  The  blue  flowers  are  most  common.  But  blue, 
pink,  or  white,  these  baby  bells  are  always  born  twins; 
two  sisters  side  by  side  on  the  same  stalk,  showing  their 
dear  fairy  faces  just  above  those  layers  of  ice.  They  are 
such  delicate  little  things  you  wonder  how  they  can  ever 
stand  it.  But  ice,  pshaw,  they  don't  mind  it  at  all. 

BLUSHING  A   WAY   THROUGH   THE   ICE 

If  you  are  a  bashful  boy  or  girl  you  can  understand  how 
the  Misses  Soldanella  have  been  able,  in  spite  of  their  icy 
covering,  to  get  here  to  greet  us  on  this  lovely  May  morn- 
ing. You  know  how  warm  your  face  feels  when  you  blush. 
It  seems  to  be  somewhat  the  same  way  with  all  flowers 
when  they  blush  into  bloom.  The  blossom  becomes  quite 
a  little  warmer  than  any  other  part  of  the  plant.  It  is  the 
heat  of  the  growing  buds  and,  still  more,  the  heat  of  the 
blossoms  that  melts  a  passage  for  the  Soldanellas  through 
the  ice,  for  they  often  blossom  before  they  get  above  the 
ice  at  all. 

The  higher  we  climb  the  brighter  the  flowers,  and  they 
grow  in  thicker  masses,  and  each  kind  spreads  out  into 
larger  fields  than  they  did  where  we  came  from  down 
below — great  belts  of  blue  gentians,  whole  fields  of  golden 
yellow  globe  flowers.  You'd  hardly  expect  this,  would 


46        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

you?  And  you'll  be  still  more  surprised  at  the  reason. 
Did  you  notice,  as  shown  in  their  pictures,  that  the  Sol- 
danellas  have  only  the  bees  for  their  callers?  Just  look 
if  you  can  see  any  bees  where  we  are  now.  Not  a  bee. 
But  butterflies  everywhere.  And  that's  the  answer.  The 
flowers  of  the  upper  meadows  are  brighter,  grow  thicker 
and  spread  wider — all  on  account  of  the  butterflies;  to 
get  the  butterfly  "trade." 

WHY   THE   BEES    GET   OUT   OF   BREATH 

Bees  can't  climb  to  such  heights  because  the  air  is  very 
thin,  and,  therefore,  harder  to  fly  in.  Remember  their 
little  bodies  are  heavy  and  their  wings  are  small.  They 
get  out  of  breath,  like  a  fat  man  with  short  legs  working 
his  way  up  Pike's  Peak.  The  butterflies,  on  the  other 
hand,  have  small  bodies  and  large  wings,  and  so  have  the 
meadows  of  the  higher  Alps  all  to  themselves.  That  the 
flowers  here  look  so  brilliant  is  partly  due  to  the  thinness 
and  clearness  of  the  air  and  partly  to  the  disposition  of  the 
butterflies.  A  bee  is  all  business,  because  she  has  so  many 
mouths  to  feed  at  home,  and  is  laying  up  honey  for  the 
days  of  the  long  winter.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Butterfly,  on  the 
other  hand,  are  gay  and  carefree  society  people. 

"We  have  no  family  waiting  to  be  fed,  so  why  worry?" 
This  is  the  butterfly  philosophy.  Only  a  sip  of  nectar  now 
and  then  for  their  personal  wants;  for  the  rest  of  the  day 
the  merry  air  dance,  here,  there,  everywhere!  They  flit 
long  distances  without  lighting.  To  attract  the  bee's 
attention  a  blossom  need  be  neither  large  nor  bright,  as 
the  bee  goes  straight  from  flower  to  flower,  wasting  no 
time  in  aimless  flights.  But  to  catch  the  eye  of  the  butter- 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE   SPRING 


47 


HOW  THE  SOLDANELLA  SISTERS  GOT  TO  THE  MAY-PARTY 
THROUGH  THE  SNOW 


fly  the  flowers  must  be  brilliantly  colored  and  grow  in 
large  masses.  So  up  in  the  butterfly  zone  only  brilliant 
flowers,  and  those  having  the  habit  of  growing  in  groups 
produce  seed  and  have  descendants.  Those  that  dress 
plainly  and  are  not  fond  of  company  die  out. 

Now  didn't  it  turn  out  just  as  I  said;  that  the  butterflies 
themselves  help  brighten  the  flowers  that  grow  among 
these  ice  fields?  I  have  something  else  quite  as  curious 
to  tell  you:  Both  the  Alpine  butterflies  and  the  flowers  were 
left  over  from  the  Ice  Age.  Not  in  the  same  sense  that  we 


48        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

pebbles  were,  for  we  are  the  identical  little  passengers 
who  rode  in  on  the  ice  trains,  and  the  life  of  a  butterfly, 
as  every  one  knows,  is  very  short.  So  is  that  of  a  flower. 
Yet  suppose  you  found  that  the  only  other  butterflies  and 
flowers  like  these  are  found,  not  among  the  flowers  and 
butterflies  in  the  lands  lower  down  in  the  Alps  but  up 
toward  the  Arctic  Zone,  in  Finland  and  Lapland;  in  the 
snow  regions  of  mountains  in  the  temperate  zone  all  over 
the  world?  It  would  look  very  much  as  if  these  flowers 
and  butterflies,  or  their  ancestors,  had  been  left  behind 
there  some  time  or  other,  wouldn't  it?  This  is  what  the 
men  of  science  think,  and  they  reason  about  it  in  this  way : 

HOW   THE   BUTTERFLIES   MISSED    THE    TRAIN 

As  the  glaciers  spread  downward  from  the  Far  North 
in  the  Ice  Age  they  brought  all  their  home  things  with 
them — climate,  plants,  insects,  animals.  Plant  and  ani- 
mal life  was  driven  step  by  step  before  the  advancing  ice. 
Then,  as  the  ice  melted,  flowers,  butterflies,  and  all  fol- 
lowed their  natural  climate  back.  But  those  that  lingered 
too  long  in  the  meadows  around  the  mountain  tops  could 
not  cross  the  hot  summer  plains  that  now  lay  between 
them  and  the  retiring  ice  sheet;  for  plants  and  animals 
that  are  used  to  cold  can't  stand  the  heat  any  more  than 
those  from  the  tropics  can  stand  the  cold.  So  only  the 
flowers  and  butterflies  remained  in  the  temperate  zone 
that  found  their  natural  climate  among  the  mountain 
peaks  and  stayed  there. 

Near  the  top  of  Mount  Washington,  the  highest  peak 
in  New  Hampshire,  is  a  colony  of  the  descendants  of  these 
butterfly  pilgrims  from  the  north  who  never  leave  their 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE   SPRING  49 

high  and  wind  swept  meadows.  There  are  no  such  butter- 
flies in  the  hills  and  plains  below,  but  go  into  Labrador 
and  you  will  see  plenty  of  them. 

LEFT-OVER   PIECES    OF   THE   ICE   AGE 

Of  course  you  understood  all  along  that  these  aren't  the 
very  same  butterflies  that  came  with  the  glaciers,  yet  in 
shady  glens  in  high  mountains,  where  the  snow  never 
melts,  people  do  sometimes  find  masses  of  ice,  which, 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  have  been  there  since  the 
Ice  Age.  And  sometimes  thick  veins  of  ice,  buried  hun- 
dreds of  feet  under  pebbles,  boulders  and  soil,  are  struck 
in  sinking  wells.  These  are  known  as  ice  wells;  huge  ice 
water  tanks  that  never  need  filling! 

II.     A  LITTLE  VISIT  WITH.  THE  GLACIERS 

But  if  the  ice  masses  in  the  shady  glens  and  under  the 
old  moraines  may  be  said  to  be  pieces  of  the  Ice  Age  left 
over,  the  glaciers  of  to-day  are,  in  a  sense,  the  Ice  Age 
itself.  For  these  glaciers  do,  on  a  smaller  scale,  what  Mr. 
Labrador  and  his  partners  in  northern  America,  Europe, 
and  Asia  did  on  a  large  scale  so  many  centuries  ago.  Sup- 
pose now,  like  Agassiz,  we  trace  a  glacier  to  its  source.  It 
will  be  a  long  journey,  all  steep,  some  of  it  almost  straight 
up,  and  along  chasms  of  slippery  ice  with  sudden  storms 
that  hide  the  chasms  and  blind  your  eyes  and  take  away 
your  breath.  The  first  part  of  our  journey  is  over  a  field 
of  ice,  gray  with  the  dirt  of  weathered  rock  from  the  moun- 
tain sides.  Along  its  borders  are  those  sharp-edged  stones 
neatly  packed  in  rows,  that  our  geography  tells  us  are 


SO        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

calletj  "lateral  moraines."  It  has  another  row  of  these 
stones  sticking  up  right  in  the  middle  of  its  back,  like  the 
sharp-pointed  vertebrae  of  the  ceratosaurus. 

By  noon,  as  often  happens  in  the  Alps  as  elsewhere  at 
this  time  of  year,  a  rain  comes  up  and  we  lunch  under  the 
shelter  of  a  tumbled  heap  of  rocks.  Watching  the  down- 
pour drift  across  the  desolate  wastes  we  think  what  jolly 
times  like  this  Agassiz  and  his  companions  had  in  their 
little  hall  of  science  under  the  big  stone.  After  lunch  we 
start  again,  and  although  it's  stiff  going,  and  it  takes  a  lot 
of  this  thin  air  to  make  one  good  breath,  we  spare  a  little, 
now  and  then,  for  shouting,  to  hear  the  wonderful  play 
of  the  echoes  among  the  mountains.  We  go  through  all 
kinds  of  weather — rain,  mist,  snow.  Then  suddenly  we 
burst  into  blinding  light.  The  sun  is  so  dazzling  on  the 
snow,  now  no  longer  ^  covered  with  dirt  and  mountain 
debris,  that  we  must  all  put  on  our  colored  glasses.  In 
some  places,  among  bare  rocks  that  absorb  the  sun's  heat, 
it  is  positively  sultry. 

The  fields  around  us  look  like  an  ocean  turned  to  stone. 
Waves  are  formed  in  the  surface  ice  of  the  glacier  because 
surface  ice  moves  faster  than  the  main  mass  beneath.  On 
the  bordering  mountain  walls  the  ice  rises  into  still  greater 
waves  "foaming  about  the  feet  of  the  dark  central  crests 
like  the  surf  of  enormous  breakers."  And  this  great,  still 
image  of  the  parent  sea,  from  which  the  air  currents  car- 
ried the  moisture  that  made  it,  has  eddies  and  whirlpools, 
and  like  the  troubled  sea,  "whose  waters  cast  up  mire  and 
dirt,"  the  glacier,  where  it  swirls  along  its  shores,  works 
pebbles  and  dirt  to  the  surface.  Often  this  material  is 
carried  into  the  centre  of  a  whirl,  as  sea  weeds  and  the 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SPRING  51 

rubbish  of  the  seashore  are  driven  into  eddies  among  the 
rocks. 

Somebody  must  have  been  here  just  ahead  of  us.  Isn't 
that  a  dark  glove  over  there?  We  come  closer.  What 
at  a  distance  seems  to  be  a  glove  proves  to  be  a  hole  in 
the  ice  so  deep  it  looks  dark.  Lying  flat  and  carefully 
peering  over  the  edge  we  look  into  something  strangely 
beautiful — an  ice  palace,  with  icicles  in  fantastic  groups 
hanging  from  the  roof.  Through  this  roof  the  sun  comes 
in  delicate  floods  of  pale  green  light,  the  combination  of 
the  yellow  rays  with  the  blue  of  the  ice.  We  drop  peb- 
bles into  the  hole.  They  rattle  down  and  down  with  long, 
dull  echoes,  dying  away.  We  can  hear  the  murmur  of 
running  water.  Gusts  of  cold  air  come  up  that  bite  like 
the  wind  on  a  sharp  winter  day. 

These  underground  palaces  of  art  start  as  great  cracks 
in  the  ice,  called  "crevasses,"  from  a  French  word  mean- 
ing a  crevice.  They  can  usually  be  seen  plainly  as  yawn- 
ing chasms,  but  sometimes  are  so  bridged  over  by  the 
snows  that  a  small,  dark  hole  is  all  you  see.  And  we  might 
not  see  that  in  time.  This  would  be  very  bad,  for  these 
snow  bridges  are  often  quite  thin.  One  might  like  to  go 
down  in  a  crevasse  and  explore  about  in  this  beautiful 
dream  world — but  not  when  one  wasn't  looking ! 

Even  when  one  is  looking  and  is  as  careful  as  can  be  it's 
dangerous.  But  still  you  may  be  sure  that  the  famous 
men  who  have  studied  glaciers  have  done  it,  for  every 
true  man  of  science  likes  to  get  at  the  bottom  of  things. 
It  was  Agassiz  who  first  went  down  in  this  way  into  the 
heart  of  a  glacier.  It  was  while  he  was  making  his  studies 
in  the  Alps,  and  he  came  very  near  being  drowned  in  one 


52        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

of  the  streams  that  always  flow  at  the  bottom  of  a  cre- 
vasse, for  these  crevasses,  breaking  up  the  ice,  increase 
the  rate  of  melting.  (You  know  broken  ice  will  not  keep 
so  well  as  a  big  block.) 


WHAT  TWO  BOYS  SAW  IN  THE  FAIRY-LAND   OF  ICE 

When  you  have  read  John  Muir's  story  of  how  he  climbed  down  into  a  crevasse 
in  California  in  his  shirt-sleeves  (see  H.  &  S.)  you  will  know  that  he  was  the  other 
of  the  "two  boys"  I  refer  to,  one  of  them  being  Louis  Agassiz,  whose  adventure  in 
this  fairy  iceland  down  in  the  glaciers  is  told  in  this  chapter.  Don't  look  danger- 
ous at  a  distance,  do  they,  those  crevasses?  Remind  one  of  the  crimps  in  a  Christ- 
mas pie.  But  notice  the  difference  when  you  get  up  close  to  one  of  them  in  the 
next  picture. 


BUT   THESE    SCIENTISTS   WILL   BE   BOYS 

Agassiz  had  been  lowered  by  a  rope.  When  his  feet 
suddenly  plunged  into  the  icy  stream  his  shout  for  help 
was  misunderstood  by  his  friends  and  he  was  lowered  still 
further.  His  second  cry,  which  you  may  be  sure  promptly 
followed  the  first,  showed  that  something  had  gone  wrong 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE  SPRING 


53 


THOSE  LITTLE   CURVED   LINES   WHEN  YOU   GET  UP  CLOSE 

This  is  what  those  little  curved  lines  are — really;  great  yawning  chasms  in  the 
ice.  The  sun  is  shining  from  the  left;  a  morning  sun,  probably,  as  those  tourists 
are  out  for  a  walk.  This  scene  must  be  pretty  well  down  the  glacier's  course,  far 
from  the  upper  fields,  for  you  see  these  people  are  just  in  ordinary  dress — not  in 
the  dress  of  mountain-climbers,  with  ropes  and  Alpine  stocks  and  everything. 


and  he  was  drawn  out.  The  worst  of  it  was  that  coming 
up  he  had  to  steer  his  course  among  those  huge  icicles, 
any  one  of  which,  being  worn  away  or  broken  loose  by  the 
friction  of  the  rope  and  striking  his  head,  would  probably 
have  killed  him.  But  they  are  always  doing  things  like 
that — these  men  of  science.  They  keep  on  being  as  curi- 


54        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

ous  and  enthusiastic  about  the  things  they  are  interested 
in  as  any  boy. 

It  is  perfectly  safe  to  climb  glaciers  as  we  are  doing — in 
a  book — but  they  are  really  ticklish  things  to  go  about  on, 
as  well  as  down  into.  To  find  out  all  the  interesting  things 
you  can  so  easily  get  through  pictures  and  the  printed  page 
took  years  of  skillful  study,  ingenuity,  and  endless  patience 
and  much  courage.  What  a  little  further  on  in  this  chap- 
ter you  will  learn  about  the  movements  of  glaciers  in  seven 
minutes,  it  took  Agassiz  seven  long  years  to  find  out  and 
make  sure  of.  To  Agassiz  more  than  to  any  other  one 
man  the  world  owes  the  tremendous  idea  of  the  Ice  Age 
and  its  story.  His  home  among  the  glaciers  of  these  Alps 
— named  playfully  by  the  devoted  scholars  who  worked 
with  him  the  "Hotel  des  Neuchatelois " — was  a  rude 
shelter  under  a  projecting  rock.  The  results  of  this  long 
study  he  published  in  a  work  in  two  volumes,  and  so  made 
known  the  great  facts  he  had  found  and  the  theory  about 
an  Ice  Age  which  he  based  upon  them  and  which  is  now 
everywhere  accepted.  He  became  professor  of  geology  at 
Harvard  University  and  as  famous  a  teacher  as  he  was  a 
student  of  nature.  After  his  great  and  useful  life  was 
ended  he  was  buried  in  his  adopted  land  with  a  boulder 
from  the  site  of  the  little  stone  hut  on  the  glacier  for  his 
monument. 

III.    THE  SOUL  OF  THE  GLACIER 

Many  of  the  fellow-countrymen  of  Agassiz,  the  peasants 
of  the  Swiss  Alps,  believe  the  glacier  is  a  living  thing  and 
has  a  soul.  In  the  spring  the  peasants  take  their  sheep 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE  SPRING  55 

and  cattle  into  the  High  meadows  called  "alps,"  from 
which  the  mountains  get  their  name,  and  remain  there 
until  fall  with  the  glaciers  all  around  them.  There  are 
nearly  2,000  glaciers  in  the  Alps,  varying  from  less  than 
a  mile  to  over  ten  miles  in  length,  and  from  a  few  hundred 
feet  to  a  mile  in  breadth.  So  the  peasants  have  every 
opportunity  to  get  acquainted  with  their  big  white  neigh- 
bors. 

"The  glacier  has  a  soul,"  they  say,  "and  a  voice,  many 
voices.  Sometimes  he  groans.  This  is  when  he  is  in 
pain.  Listen ! " 

SOUNDS   THAT   GIVE   ONE   THE   " CREEPS" 

We  do  hear  a  sound  very  like  a  groan.  Even  experienced 
mountain  climbers  can  hardly  keep  down  a  "creepy"  feel- 
ing when  they  hear  it.  This  sound  is  made  when  the  ice 
is  cracking  into  a  crevasse  and  while  it  is  enlarging.  These 
crevasses  are  formed  by  various  strains  in  the  ice  as  it 
moves  along.  So  long  as  the  strain  which  caused  them 
continues  the  crevasses  keep  widening.  The  "groans" 
may  be  said  to  be  "growing  pains." 

In  some  places  you  hear  a  constant  roaring  sound.  The 
peasants  are  not  superstitious  about  this  sound  however. 
They  know  it  is  made  by  what  they  call  the  "moulins"  or 
mills  of  the  glacier.  Water,  melting  on  the  surface,  makes 
streams.  These,  running  together,  make  a  larger  stream. 
This  stream,  coming  to  a  crack  in  the  ice  where  a  crevasse 
is  just  beginning,  pours  down,  hollows  out  a  little  shaft  and 
joins  streams  in  the  interior  of  the  glacier,  like  that  in 
which  Agassiz  took  a  bath  when  he  didn't  want  to.  The 


56        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

noise  of  the  water,  striking  far  below,  comes  up  through 
the  shaft,  as  a  voice  comes  up  through  a  speaking  tube. 
But  the  crack  into  which  the  water  falls  must  be  very 
narrow,  so  that  the  water  can  melt  both  walls  and  thus 
form  a  shaft;  otherwise  it  merely  glides  down  the  nearer 
wall  and  makes  no  sound. 

NOISES   WE   PEBBLES   HELP   MAKE 

Where  two  ice  rivers  emptying  into  a  main  stream  come 
together  you  hear  a  constant  dull  rattle  and  rumble.  This 
is  made  by  the  blocks  of  stone  and  trains  of  pebbles  that 
have  ridden  in  on  the  backs  of  the  two  glaciers  thus  going 
into  partnership,  falling  between  the  glaciers  at  the  point 
where  they  come  together.  The  stones  that  do  not  fall 
over  are  brought  together  in  the  centre  of  the  glacier  and 
so  make  that  spiny  backbone  of  his,  the  "medial  moraine." 
The  rows  of  stones  on  the  two  sides  of  the  glacier,  called 
the  " lateral  moraines,"  have  fallen  piece  by  piece  from 
the  mountain  walls  as  the  glacier  moved  along  between 
them. 

But  the  strangest  thing  about  the  voices  of  the  glaciers 
I  have  yet  to  tell.  Whenever  the  sun  is  shining  brightly, 
as  I  have  said,  and  the  gentians  and  the  globe  flowers  open 
their  petals  and  the  birds  start  the  chorus  of  the  day,  the 
glacier  begins  singing,  too,  humming  to  itself  a  pleasant 
tune.  When  the  sky  grows  cloudy,  even  for  a  short  time, 
the  birds  stop  singing,  the  flowers  cover  their  faces,  the 
bees  and  butterflies  hurry  to  shelter,  and  the  glacier's  song 
gradually  dies  away.  Any  cloud  may  bring  rain,  as  far 
as  the  flowers  and  the  bees  and  the  butterflies  know,  and, 
for  the  same  reason,  the  winged  people  hurry  to  cover 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE   SPRING 


57 


because  they  don't  want  to  get  their  wings  wet.  The 
flowers  hide  their  faces  to  keep  the  rain  from  washing  their 
pollen  away,  and  the  birds  stop  singing  because,  like  the 
rest  of  us,  they  don't  feel  so  cheerful  under  gloomy  skies. 


ON  THE  ROOF  OF  THE  ANDES,   WHERE  IT'S  TOO  COLD  TO 
GROW   GLACIERS 


But  the  glacier,  why  does  he  stop  singing  too?  Because 
that  murmuring  tinkle  you  heard  was  made  by  the  water 
melting  on  the  glacier  and  running  into  rivulets  a  little 
way  under  its  surface.  When  the  sun  stops  shining  the 
surface  ice  stops  melting,  the  water  gradually  quits  run- 
ning and  the  murmur  of  the  song  dies  away. 

It  is  because  of  these  queer  human  habits  of  the  glacier 
and,  above  all,  his  sensitive  response  to  the  moods  of  days 
and  seasons,  that  many  of  the  mountain  people  insist  he 
is  not  only  a  living  creature,  but  that  he  has  a  soul.  We 


58        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

think  of  all  this  now  as  the  western  sun  drops  behind  the 
snowy  summits,  the  glacier's  song  grows  silent,  and  we 
hear,  mingling  with  the  vespers  of  the  birds,  voices  echo- 
ing from  crag  to  crag  the  words  of  the  psalm,  "Praise  ye 
the  Lord."  These  are  the  voices,  of  the  herdsmen  speak- 
ing to  each  other  from  alp  to  alp — the  evening  call  to 
prayer. 

IV.    How  THE  SNOW  MEN,  THE  GLACIERS,  AND  THE 
ROCKS  Go  WALKING 

Now  that  we  have  learned  how  glaciers,  wild  flowers, 
and  butterflies  get  up  into  this  high  world,  by  climbing  up 
here  ourselves  in  the  beautiful  springtime,  the  next  thing, 
I  suppose,  is  to  climb  down  again.  But  first  just  look 
over  the  edge  here  and  you  can  get  some  notion  of  how 
high  we  are,  not  merely  in  feet  and  figures,  as  we  have  it 
in  the  table  of  mountain  heights  in  our  geography,  but  in 
actual  feeling. 

"What  are  those  little  blocks,  all  ruled  off  like  a  chess- 
board, away  down  there?" 

"  Those  are  the  little  Swiss  farms  with  the  gray  roads 
between." 

"And  those  small  white  things  among  the  farms  that 
look  like  pieces  of  grit?" 

"Those  are  the  Swiss  villages." 

"And  the  black  specks  on  the  slopes  of  the  mountain?" 

"Those  are  tourists  with  their  guides,  coming  up.  Peo- 
ple, no  doubt,  whom  we  should  like  to  know,  but  we  shall 
have  an  interesting  new  acquaintance  travelling  down 
with  us.  You've  met  some  of  his  family,  no  doubt,  for 


THE   SOUL  OF  THK   SPRING 


59 


THE  OLD  MAN  OF  BALISTAN 

Where  would  you  say,  judging  from  the  head-dress  of  the  man  in  the  middle, 
this  scene  is  located?  Somewhere  in  Asia,  wouldn't  you?  For  in  Asia  the  na- 
tives, particularly  the  Mahometans,  wear  turbans,  as  you  would  learn  by  simply 
looking  up  "turban"  in  a  dictionary.  And  wouldn't  those  summer  helmets  lead 
you  to  suppose  that  this  is  a  hot  climate,  in  spite  of  the  great  ice-pillar  and  the 
snow-field?  And  don't  those  helmets  suggest  Englishmen?  Now,  where  in  Asia 
would  you  find  vast  mountains,  a  hot  climate,  Mahometans,  and  Englishmen  to- 
gether? Yes,  to  be  sure,  in  the  Himalayas  of  India.  And  that's  just  where  an 
expedition  of  English  scientists  came  across  this  grotesque  creature  of  stone  and 
ice  one  summer  day,  on  a  glacier  in  Balistan.  So  I  just  called  him  ''The  Old  Man  of 
Balistan." 


he's  an  ice  man.  There  are  several  of  these  ice  men 
always  travelling  down  on  the  glaciers." 

You'll  know  one  of  them  the  moment  you  see  him,  for 
they  are  queer-looking  fellows  with  only  one  leg — or 
rather  one  leg  at  a  time — and  they  wear  big  stone  hats. 
They  never  go  walking  without  them.  They  can't. 

To  the  group  of  boys  and  girls  to  whom  I  first  told  these 


60        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

stories  of  my  life  and  adventures  nothing  was  more  inter- 
esting than  this  account  of  the  ice  men  who  walk.  On 
that  occasion  I  called  them  snow  men  because  the  boys 
had  just  been  making  a  snow  man,  and  these  ice  men  up 


LOOKS  LIKE  A  BROTHER,  BUT  HE'S  NO  RELATION 

This  "old  man''  is  a  creature,  not  of  the  snows  but  of  the  winds.  The  capstone 
— apparently  conglomerate,  it  looks  so  rough  and  pebbly — tumbled  down  from 
the  mountains  once  upon  a  time  and  found  a  resting  place  on  a  bed  of  softer  rock, 
a  section  of  which  became  separated  from  the  mass  on  either  side  by  those  earth 
cracks  called  "joints."  Then  the  winds  and  other  instruments  of  weathering  got 
their  fingers  in  these  cracks,  wore  the  neighboring  sections  away,  and  left  this 
pillar  standing.  It  is  broader  at  the  bottom  because  the  winds,  checked  by  the  ob- 
stacles on  the  ground,  didn't  strike  with  such  force  as  they  did  higher  up. 


here,  like  the  glaciers  on  which  they  always  travel,  are 
made  of  snow  turned  to  ice.  You  have  heard  the  expres- 
sion "clothes  make  the  man,"  but  in  the  case  of  these  men 
of  the  snows  it  is  literally  true,  so  far  as  their  hats  are  con- 
cerned, for  it  is  their  hats  that  make  them  grow. 

"I  bite,"  said  the  High  School  Boy,  "what's  the  an- 
swer?" 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE  SPRING 


CAN  YOU   SOLVE   THIS   PICTURE    PUZZLE? 

For  reply  I  roughly  sketched  the  picture  at  the  top  of 
the  page.  From  this  hint  my  audience  thought  out  the 
answer  for  themselves.  See  if  you  can  do  so  before  you 
learn,  in  the  next  few  paragraphs,  what  the  answer  is. 

It  comes  about  like  this.  One  day  we  see  a  big  stone 
lying  on  the  glacier,  and  when  we  come  that  way  again 
several  days  later  this  same  stone  is  standing  on  a  tall 
pillar  of  ice.  We  notice  the  stone  hat  is  tilted  forward  a 
little,  apparently  to  shade  this  queer  man's  face,  which  is 
always  turned  directly  toward  the  sun.  It  sits  jauntily 
on  one  side — this  hat  of  his — as  if  he  were  feeling  particu- 
larly contented  with  himself  and  the  world  on  this  sunny 
day  and  had  started  for  a  stroll. 

And  it  really  is  because  the  sun  is  so  bright  that  the 
hat  is  tipped.  Moreover  it  is  because  of  the  sunshine  that 
the  man  takes  a  stroll.  If,  after  more  days  of  sunshine, 
we  return  we  see  the  same  stone  further  down  the  slope 
of  the  glacier  and  apparently  standing  on  the  same  leg. 

"But  does  he  or  it  actually  walk  on  that  leg?" 

(The  audience,  who  at  first  thought  I  was  joking,  had 
begun  to  believe  I  was  in  earnest.) 


62        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Yes,  that  leg  and  others.  Before  this  Alpine  tourist 
ends  his  travels  down  to  the  valleys  below  he  may  have, 
all  told,  as  many  legs  as  a  centipede,  but  only  one  at  a 
time.  Like  the  legs  of  the  amoeba  and  the  claws  of  the 
crab  they  are  renewed  as  wanted.  A  big  stone  falling 
from  the  mountain  side  upon  a  glacier  protects  the  ice 
beneath  from  the  sun's  rays,  so,  as  the  ice  melts  down 
around  it,  the  stone  is  left  standing  on  a  pillar.  These 
" glacier  tables"  (to  use  the  scientific  term)  are  formed  on 
the  south  sides  of  glaciers  where  there  is  the  most  sun. 
Owing  to  the  slant  of  the  rays  the  rock  is  heated  most  on 
the  south  end  and  so  tips  in  that  direction  more  and  more. 
Finally  it  falls  off  and,  in  so  doing,  pitches  farther  down 
the  slope.  Then  a  new  pillar  is  formed  and  the  whole 
process  is  gone  through  again. 

(If  we  should  get  lost  up  here  any  one  of  these  snow 
men  will  tell  us  the  way  out.  The  snow  man's  hat,  for 
the  reason  stated,  always  tips  toward  the  south.) 

The  stones  of  the  winter  lands  are  not  only  like  human 
beings  in  the  fact  that  they  walk,  but  like  little  human 
beings  in  the  fact  that  when  they  are  small  they  can't. 
In  one  of  the  pictures  I  drew  for  the  boys  and  girls — that 
representing  the  ice  pillar  from  which  the  stone  has  slipped 
— you  may  be  able  to  make  out  a  little  pebble.  It  got  a 
ride  because  it  was  hiding  under  the  big  stone.  Left  to 
itself  "it  wouldn't  have  a  leg  to  stand  on,"  as  the  saying 
goes,  for  small  stones  are  heated  through  by  the  sun  and 
so  sink  down  into  the  ice  and  form  no  "legs." 

MR.  GLACIER'S  CATERPILLAR  TRACTOR 

"The  glaciers,"  says  Reclus,  "seem  as  motionless  as  the 
peaks  that  tower  above  them."  Nevertheless,  as  we  know, 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE   SPRING 


fnm  a  phvograph  cop^dzhiedtby  Merl  La  Voy 

THE   RUSH  OF  THE  AVALANCHE 

It's  seldom  you  can  get  a  snap-shot  at  an  avalanche — it's  so  sudden !  Then, 
when  you  do  get  one  you  must  be  an  expert  or  your  picture  will  be  a  blur.  This 
picture  was  taken  by  Merl  La  Voy.  An  interesting  thing  about  it  is  that  the 
scene  is  on  Mount  McKinley,  which,  as  your  geography  will  tell  you,  is  the  highest 
mountain  in  North  America.  The  avalanche  started  near  the  top,  where  the 
greatest  fields  of  loose  snow  lie.  We  see  it  in  the  act  of  plunging  into  a  vast  cre- 
vasse several  miles  below,  and  sending  up  clouds  of  snow.  They  look  like  steam. 


they  do  move.  While  the  motion  is  in  so  many  respects 
like  that  of  a  river  that  glaciers  are  often  called  "ice 
rivers,"  they  have  motions  and,  so  to  say,  "methods"  that 
curiously  suggest  the  inventions  of  men.  Take,  for  exam- 
ple, the  way  they  climb  down  a  steep  hill;  for  all  the  world 
like  the  "tanks"  in  the  Great  War.  The  tanks,  you 
remember,  made  nothing  of  shell  holes,  rough  country, 
ravines,  or  trenches,  but  lumbered  and  crushed  their  way 


64        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

along,  resistless  as  the  Fates.  And,  you  may  also  recall, 
the  tanks  moved  by  laying  sections  of  themselves — the 
great  cleats  on  the  outside  belt — which  they  picked  up 
again,  as  they  advanced.  This  was  called  the  "caterpillar 
tractor"  system  of  travelling. 

Now  watch  the  glacier  when  it  comes  to  an  incline  much 
steeper  than  its  ordinary  slope.  It  breaks  across  in  sec- 
tions at  right  angles  to  its  bed,  and  section  after  section 
drops  down.  Then  the  forward  sections  crowded  upon  by 
those  in  the  rear  are  pushed  up  close,  freeze  together  again, 
and  on  goes  the  glacier  as  good  as  new. 

As  a  traveller, '  however,  it  is  a  little  slow.  It  made 
faster  time  in  the  old  days — in  the  Ice  Age — when  glaciers 
were  so  much  larger,  but  to-day,  at  the  rate  at  which 
ordinary  glaciers  travel,  it  may  take  a  boulder  as  big  as 
Plymouth  Rock  something  like  a  hundred  years  to  be 
carried  from  the  upper  fields  to  the  heap  of  stones  and 
soil  which  your  geography  calls  a  "terminal  moraine," 
and  where  Mr.  Glacier  says: 

"All  out!    Far  as  we  go." 

HIDE  AND   SEEK   IN  THE  LIBRARY 

How  would  you  like  to  go  to  school  to  the  pretty  Misses  Sol- 
danella?  They  can  teach  you  a  lot  about  botany.  If  you  learn 
what  an  unusual  thing  they  do  with  their  leaves,  for  instance,  that 
will  lead  you  to  follow  up  leaves  in  general.  Leaves  are  wonderful 
things.  Indeed,  it  isn't  often  yod  find  the  leaf  of  a  book  that  will 
tell  you  half  as  much  as  the  leaf  of  a  plant,  if  you  only  know  how 
to  read  it. 

In  Grant  Allen's  "Flash  Lights  on  Nature,"  you  will  find  that 
the  Soldanella  sisters  store  food  in  their  leaves  all  winter  just  as 
we  put  things  away  in  the  cellar,  and  how  this  helps  them  get  up 
so  early  in  the  spring;  why  the  fact  that  the  little  sisters  are  not 


THE   SOUL  OF  THE  SPRING  65 

very  tall  makes  them  hurry  so;  and  why  if  they  didn't  hurry  they 
wouldn't  get  to  the  party  at  all ! 

What  other  members  of  the  primrose  family  do  you  know? 

See  what  you  can  find  about  our  earliest  flowers — hepatica, 
bloodroot,  dog-toothed  violet,  jack-in-the-pulpit,  Dutchman's 
breeches,  anemones. 

If  you  will  examine  closely  many  early  spring  buds  and  flowers 
— especially  those  like  the  willow  and  hazel  catkins — you  will  find 
that  they  too  keep  warm  and  grow  in  the  early  spring,  not  from 
the  warmth  of  the  sun  alone  but  from  the  fuel  they  have  laid  up 
in  their  buds. 

Did  you  know  that  to  see  the  very  first  flowers  of  all  in  the  spring 
you  must  look  up — away  above  your  head?  (Maple.) 

Any  good  book  on  Alaska  will  tell  a  number  of  striking  things 
about  how  rapidly  spring  comes  on  in  the  lands  where  glaciers 
grow. 

Get  Muir's  "Mountains  of  California"  and  hear  him  tell  about 
how  he  went  down  into  a  crevasse  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  and  of  the 
fairy  underworld  he  found  there,  and  how  he  hated  to  come  away. 

Reclus1  tells  how  the  glaciers  not  only  come  down  to  call  on 
the  farmers,  sometimes,  but  even  help  them  pick  cherries! 

I  suppose  the  children  who  go  to  the  excellent  Swiss  schools  take 
delight  in  telling  grandmother  that  Mr.  Glacier  isn't  really  a  per- 
son— as  he  is  in  the  tales  of  the  winter  fireside — but  wouldn't  both 
grandmother  and  the  children  open  their  eyes  if  they  knew  that  in 
Greenland  there  is  a  glacier  so  big  it  feeds  itself  and  makes  its  own 
snow  and  its  own  storms  and  everything?  Hobb's  "The  Face  of 
the  Earth"  tells  all  about  it. 

And  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  and  Hobbs  together  will  tell 
you  how  to  make  a  good  glacier.  There  are  a  half-dozen  things 
you  must  remember  or  your  glacier  won't  turn  out  right,  (i)  You 
must  take  plenty  of  snow;  (2)  and  keep  it  in  a  cool  place;  (3)  but 
you  must  warm  it  a  little  too,  once  in  a  while;  (4)  your  mountain 
gorges  must  not  be  too  steep;  (5)  you  must  have  your  mountains 
set  just  so;  (6)  and  distribute  your  storms  with  care.  By  doing 
all  these  things  you  get  fine,  durable  glaciers,  100  to  200  feet  thick, 
sometimes  500  and  even  1,000  feet  thick.  But  you  must  be  care- 
ful, and,  of  course,  it  takes  time. 

1  "The  Earth." 


CHAPTER  IV 

(APRIL) 

Now  the  noisy  winds  are  still; 
April's  coming  up  the  hill ! 
All  the  spring  is  in  her  train, 
Led  by  shining  ranks  of  rain. 

— Mary  Mapes  Dodge. 

THE    APRIL    RAINS   AND    THE   WORK   OF   THE 
RIVERS 

I  always  liked  the  little  boy's  definition  of  a  river  sys- 
tem. "  Rivers  that  empty  into  other  rivers  that  empty 
into  other  rivers  that  empty  into  the  sea." 

What  is  still  more  interesting,  the  sea  at  the  same  time 
is  emptying  into  the  rivers;  for  the  waters  of  all  the  lands 
and  the  waters  of  all  the  seas,  are  one,  and  what  the  rivers 
give  to  the  sea  the  sea  returns  in  the  rain  clouds  that  are 
blown  landward  by  the  winds.  The  Earth's  waters  are 
thus  always  in  circulation  like  the  blood  in  our  bodies. 
In  making  this  endless  circuit  they  do  an  immense  amount 
of  useful  and  beautiful  work,  and  have  many  strange  and 
curious  ways  of  doing  it.  It's  a  great  family  affair  of  the 
Waters  people.  Everybody  has  a  hand  in  it,  from  the 
baby  rill  that  toddles  across  the  country  road,  the  brook 
it  meets  in  the  meadow,  the  creek  that  runs  through  the 
wood,  and  the  river  into  which  it  flows,  to  the  greater  river 
which  carries  forward  these  mingled  waters  to  the  sea. 

66 


THE  APRIL   RAINS 


67 


I.     WHAT  I  BROUGHT  BACK  FROM  THE  CREEK 

I  met  a  raindrop  once  that  had  followed  the  thing 
through,  starting  where  a  little  creek  began,  and  got  such 
a  load  of  information  I  could  hardly  carry  it,  about  the 
wonderful  part  the  rivers  take  and  have  taken  in  the  mak- 
ing and  remaking  of  the  world. 

We  see  the  April  rains  carve  fairy  canyons  in  the  soft 
clay  of  the  roadside  or  the  creek,  but  it  is  hard  to  realize, 
as  we  stand  on  some  pinnacle  of  the  Alps  and  look  out 
over  the  deep  and  wide  valleys,  the  gorges,  the  cliffs,  and 
mountains  cut  in  two,  that  all  are  but  the  handiwork  of 


68        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  raindrops  banded  together  as  flowing  waters.  For  a 
long  time  this  was  questioned  by  scientific  men,  because  the 
idea  so  upso:t  the  old  theory  that  great  changes  in  this 
world  of  ours  came  about  all  of  a  sudden  and  from  causes 


HOW  THEY  STUDY  GEOGRAPHY  IN  BOSTON 

This  is  what,  in  the  Boston  schools,  they  call  an  "umbrella  party."  "Umbrella 
party"  sounds  much  more  attractive  than  "geography  lesson,"  but  as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  is  a  geography  lesson  and  a  fine  one.  As  soon  as  they  get  off  that  brick 
pavement  the  boys  and  girls  will  see  those  rain-drops  cutting  out  little  Mississippi 
River  systems,  filling  little  Great  Lakes,  plunging  over  Niagaras  two  inches  high ! 


not  at  work  in  these  days.  Now,  however,  nobody  doubts 
that  the  big  things  are  done  by  the  little  people,  working 
together  over  long  periods  of  time;  little  snowflakes,  little 
raindrops,  little  cells  in  plants.  As  a  result,  the  Alps,  so 
far  as  the  expression  of  their  faces  is  concerned,  are  as 
little  like  the  Alps  of  the  past  as  the  face  of  the  old  farm  of 
to-day  is  like  the  farm  of  those  ancient  yesterdays,  when 


THE  APRIL  RAINS  69 

the  brontosaurus  browsed  where  old  Dobbin  is  nipping 
the  meadow  grass  and  the  mammoth  ate  the  leaves  of 
trees  that  stood  where  White  Face  is  thoughtfully  chewing 
her  cud  in  the  shade. 

Right  where  you  sit  reading,  perhaps,  the  land  used  to 
be  buried  two  miles  deep  beneath  rocks  which  have  been 
worn  away  by  wind  and  rain  and  by  rivers  which  vanished 
long  ago.  Everything  has  been  so  changed  that  if  the  old 
scenery  should  be  put  back  you  would  be  lost  right  on  the 
home  farm. 

WHERE    YOU   CAN   JUMP   ACROSS   THE   MISSISSIPPI 

Wrinkles  in  the  earth  and  in  the  mountainsides  make 
the  first  troughs  for  the  streamlets  and  the  rivers,  and 
then  the  running  water  itself  digs  these  natural  channels 
deeper.  Many  rivers  begin  as  streamlets  flowing  out  of 
springs.  The  great  Mississippi  began  as  a  baby,  just  like 
the  rest  of  us.  You  can  jump  across  it  still  if  you  go  up 
to  its  source.  Springs  not  only  start  rivers  in  life  but  go 
on  feeding  them.  Most  large  river  systems  get  secret 
gifts  in  this  way,  as  they  flow  along,  from  thousands  of 
springs  that  empty  into  them  or  their  tributaries. 

So  springs  start  and  feed  the  rivers.  Now  what  do  you 
suppose  starts  the  springs?  Raindrops  stored  away  in 
big  stone  "safes,"  much  as  a  small  boy  stores  away  pennies 
in  his  tin  bank !  The  water  of  rains  and  melting  snows, 
passing  down  through  the  soilj  soaks  into  the  little  cham- 
bers or  pores  in  such  rocks  as  sandstone  and  limestone, 
and  keeps  going  on  down  until  it  comes  to  a  bed  of  hard 
stone,  such  as  slate  or  granite,  into  which  it  cannot  soak. 

Now  rockbeds,  as  you  know,  have  a  slope — some  more, 


70        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


THE    SPRING    WHEN    EMPTY 


THE    SPRING    WHEN    FULL 

THIS  SPRING   PLAYS  IT'S  A  TOWN  PUMP 

These  two  pictures  show  an  intermittent  spring  about  five  miles  from  Singer 
Glenn,  Virginia,  and  there  called  the  "Tide  Spring."  You  can  see  where  the  idea 
of  the  tide  comes  in,  but  can  you  think  why  the  spring  seems  to  have  a  tide  sys- 
tem all  its  own?  You  know  what  a  siphon  is.  Well,  think  how  a  kind  of  siphon 
might  be  formed  in  rock,  dissolved  out  by  water  flowing  underground.  Then  look 
at  the  picture  on  the  next  page. 


THE  APRIL  RAINS 


HOW  THE  LITTLE   SPRING  WORKS  ITS  PUMP 

This  is  how  the  pump  of  an  intermittent  spring  is  worked.  Some  portions  of 
rock  are  dissolved  by  underground  waters  more  readily  than  others  and  so  cavities 
are  sometimes  formed,  as  shown.  As  long  as  the  water  in  the  reservoir  is  below 
the  arch  of  the  siphon-shaped  outlet  no  water  escapes,  but  as  soon  as  it  rises  to 
the  level  of  the  arch  the  whole  of  the  water  is  drawn  off.  Then  the  spring  ceases 
to  flow  until  the  reservoir  fills  up  again.  You  can  empty  water  in  the  same  way 
by  using  a  bent  tube  of  any  kind.  Can  you  tell  why  the  water  flows  up-hill  in  this 
way?  Remember  what  you  know  about  air-pressure  and  then  look  up  "siphon" 
in  your  encyclopaedia. 


some  less — owing  to  the  wrinkling  of  the  earth's  crust. 
So  the  water,  slowly  trickling  through  the  porous  rock, 
forms  a  steady  stream  which  runs  down  along  the  hard 
rock,  as  rain  runs  down  a  roof,  and  finally  gushes  out  at 
some  lower  level. 

You  can  be  sure  these  companies  of  raindrops,  hurrying 
back  to  the  light,  don't  fail  to  notice  any  cracks  in  the 
rocks  along  the  way,  and  at  such  places  they  come  gushing 
up  with  sparkle  and  dance;  and  the  greater  the  dip  of  the 
rock  beds  the  higher  they  dance,  of  course. 

But  it  takes  any  one  raindrop  so  long  to  get  back  into 
the  sunshine  after  it  starts  on  its  underground  journey 


72        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

that  you'd  think  it  would  forget  how  to  dance  at  all !  It 
isn't  just  the  same  raindrop,  to  be  sure,  that  goes  into  the 
ground  and  comes  out  again,  because  the  raindrops  get  all 
mixed  up  with  each  other  as  they  move  along,  but  just 
imagine  some  one  raindrop  that  fell,  say,  on  a  hilltop  on 
the  day  a  baby  was  born  in  a  valley  five  miles  away,  where 
there  was  a  spring  in  a  shady  hollow  near  the  baby's  home. 
By  the  time  that  raindrop  got  down  to  the  spring  the  baby 
would  be  old  enough  to  vote ! 

Yet  this  is  a  very  good  thing  for  the  rivers  and  the  rest 
of  us — this  slow  travel  of  the  underground  water,  whether 
it  comes  out  in  springs  or  simply  seeps  through  the  soil  as 
most  of  that  which  supplies  the  rivers  does.  Otherwise, 
if  all  the  water  of  the  rains  went  directly  into  the  rivers 
we  would  have  floods  after  every  wet  spell  and  empty  river 
beds  between  times. 

Here's  another  river  rebus.  How  do  rivers  grow  longer 
at  the  top?  All  rivers  grow  at  their  source  because  their 
headwaters  eat  back  into  the  rocks  and  the  soil,  just  as 
the  rain  wears  away  the  head  of  any  gully.  Where  the 
rock  is  soft  they  eat  back  faster.  The  Mohawk  River  in 
New  York  State  probably  wouldn't  have  amounted  to 
anything  if  it  hadn't  done  this  very  thing.  From  Albany 
westward  past  Utica  runs  a  belt  of  shale,  a  weak  stone, 
but  here  so  soft  that  the  surface  of  it  crumbles  back  to 
clay  in  every  winter's  frost.  Into  this  the  Mohawk,  which 
in  past  ages  was  only  a  little  stream,  has  eaten  back  its 
way  until  now  it  is  over  a  hundred  miles  long. 

But  sometimes  rivers  are  so  big  the  very  first  day  they 
come  into  the  world  that  you  may  say  they  are  born  half 
grown.  You  find  them,  among  other  places,  in  the  moun- 


THE  APRIL  RAINS  73 

tains  of  California.  Nearly  all  the  water  from  the  melting 
snows  on  Mount  Shasta  sinks  at  once  into  the  porous  lava 
fields  of  the  mountain  slopes,  and  after  wandering  about 
in  the  hidden  veins  comes  out,  filtered  and  cool,  in  the 
form  of  large  springs  which  make  rivers  that  set  out  on 


From  Norton's  "Elements  of  Geology."  By  permis- 
sion of  Ginn  and  Company 

HOW  MOST  OF  EUROPE'S  RIVERS  GET  THEIR  START 

Most  of  the  important  rivers  of  Europe  start  as  streams  of  ice-water,  flowing  out 
of  glaciers.  Notice  the  boulders  along  the  side  of  the  stream.  They  also  came 
out  of  the  body  of  the  glacier,  where,  as  we  shall  see  when  we  take  up  "The  Stones 
of  the  Field"  in 'Chapter  VII,  the  boulders  that  rode  south  with  the  glaciers  got 
most  of  their  roundness. 

their  life  journeys  without  ever  having  been  babies  at  all 
so  far  as  you  can  see.  The  Shasta  River  is  one  of  these. 
The  McCloud  is  another.  It  gushes  forth  suddenly  from 
a  lava  bluff  in  a  roaring  spring  seventy-five  yards  across, 
two- thirds  of  the  width  of  the  river  in  its  widest  part. 
The  River  Jordan  in  the  Holy  Land  begins  in  one  of  these 
great  springs  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Hermon. 

We  know  already  what  a  hand  the  glaciers  had  in  the 
Ice  Age  in  shaping  the  course  and  conduct  of  rivers,  and 


74        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

you  may  be  sure  they  have  something  to  do  with  the 
making  of  rivers  to-day.  The  under  side  of  a  glacier  gets 
warmed  from  three  sources:  (i)  its  own  pressure;  (2)  the 
friction  as  it  moves;  and  (3)  the  heat  from  the  inside  of 
the  earth  which,  on  account  of  this  thick  ice  blanket,  can't 
get  away  into  the  air  as  it  does  elsewhere.  This  heat 
melts  the  ice  and,  as  we  know,  there  is  water  melting  also 
on  the  surface  of  glaciers  and  in  the  crevasses.  Beside  all 
this  the  water  of  rains  falls  upon  the  glacier  so  that  there 
is  plenty  of  water  to  make  rivers,  and  we  always  find 
streams  of  water  running  from  a  glacier's  front.  Most  of 
the  rivers  of  Central  Europe  start  in  this  way. 

THE   BEAUTY   OF   THE    BRIDAL  VEIL 

And,  although  they  didn't  make  the  rivers  themselves, 
the  Ice  Age  Glaciers  are  held  responsible  for  the  fact  that 
many  little  rivers  always  have  to  jump  to  catch  the  train. 
That  is  to  say,  they  come  tumbling  over  falls  to  join  the 
larger  streams  into  which  they  empty.  The  reason  of 
this  is  that  when,  in  the  Ice  Age,  the  glaciers  filled  the 
river  valleys  the  larger  glaciers  in  a  main  valley  dug  below 
the  tributary  valleys  and  so  left  the  mouths  of  the  tribu- 
tary rivers  high  up  on  the  main  valley's  walls.  The 
famous  "Bridal  Veil"  in  the  Yosemite  is  one  of  these  side 
valley  falls.  The  fall — 900  feet — is  so  great  that  the 
water  widens  to  a  fleecy  foam  and  waves  back  and  forth 
in  the  wind  like  a  gauzy  veil  and,  instead  of  a  roar  like 
Niagara,  it  makes  a  rustling  sound  like  silk. 

While  some  rivers  come  hurrying  down  like  that — as  if 
they  really  were  afraid  the  larger  river  would  go  off  and 
leave  them — others,  like  the  Amazon,  roll  on  as  stately  as 


THE  APRIL  RAINS  75 

a  Lord  Mayor's  procession.  But  the  waters  of  all  are  on 
their  way  to  the  sea.  The  rock  layers,  owing  to  the  wrink- 
ling of  the  earth  as  it  shrinks,  are  nowhere  level,  so  SOW- 


JUMPING  .TO  CATCH  THE  TRAIN 

See  the  famous  Bridal  Veil  Falls  in  the  Yosemite  Valley  hurrying  down  to  reach 
the  river  below.     As  the  stream  descends,  it  broadens  into  a  beautiful,  filmy  veil. 

ing  water  is  always  on  a  down  grade,  sloping  toward  the 
sea  or  toward  other  land  that  does  slope  toward  the  sea. 
Then  remember  too  as  the  sea  bottom  keeps  sinking  the 
continents  keep  rising,  which  increases  the  pitch  of  the 
land. 


76        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

All  very  simple,  but  none  the  less  grand  and  impressive. 
Ruskin,  in  one  of  the  noblest  of  his  passages,  says: 

"[All  water  courses],  from  the  inch-deep  streamlet  that 
crosses  the  village  land  in  trembling  clearness  to  the  massy 
and  silent  march  of  the  Amazon  and  the  Ganges,  owe  their 
play  and  power  to  the  ordained  elevations  of  the  earth; 
[to]  paths  prepared  for  them  by  which  at  some  appointed 
rate  of  journey  they  must  evermore  descend,  sometimes 
slow  and  sometimes  swift,  but  never  pausing,  the  gate- 
ways of  guarding  mountains  opened  for  them  in  cleft  and 
chasm,  and  from  afar  off  the  great  heart  of  the  sea  calling 
them  to  itself." 

That's  a  poetic  way  of  putting  it,  but  it's  a  fact  never- 
theless. 


II.    THE  HUMAN  NATURE  IN  RIVERS 

There's  a  lot  of  human  nature  in  rivers.  To  begin  with, 
as  we  might  suppose,  they  do  the  most  playing  and  the 
least  work  when  they  are  young.  Brooks  will  be  brooks, 
you  know ! 

What  pretty  ways  they  have  in  babyhood  !  Kissing  the 
pebbles,  crooning,  bubbling,  chattering,  playing,  they  are 
big  Mississippis  or  great  oceans  that,  like  Homer's  ocean 
river,  flow  around  the  world.  Their  bubbles  are  ships, 
sometimes  wrecked  on  dreadful  headlands  along  the  shores. 

THE   CHANT   OF   THE   WATERFALLS 

Waterfalls  are  found  only  in  young  streams  and  more 
often  as  you  near  the  source.  Older  streams  have  worn 
down  their  beds  more  nearly  to  a  level  and,  as  we  all 


THE  APRIL  RAINS  77 

know,  more  rivers  begin  among  the  mountains  and  high- 
lands than  in  the  lower  lands.  In  the  mountain  regions 
there  are  plenty  of  rocks  and  cliffs  to  jump  from,  and  the 
rivers,  you  may  be  sure,  make  the  most  of  their  oppor- 


' BROOKS  WILL  BE  BROOKS,  YOU  KNOW! 


Our  baby  river  of  the  meadow  seems  to  be  playing  it  has  a  Niagara  Falls  of  its 
own,  "Rock  of  Ages"  and  all!  See  the  "huge  mass"  of  rock  at  the  foot  of  the 
falls;  and  the  rapids? 


tunities.  At  such  falls  as  the  Bridal  Veil  they  jump  so 
far  they  are  turned  into  white  cascades,  and  as  you  climb 
the  cliff  beside  them  and  feel  the  wind  wafting  spray  in 
your  face  you  hear  the  music  of  their  songs.  The  more 
or  less  regular  dash  of  the  water  as  it  swings  back  and 
forth  in  the  wind  gives  that  chanting  sound  described  in 
waterfall  poetry. 


78        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Like  children  these  dancing,  singing  rivers  love  pic- 
tures and  color.  You  see  that  in  the  rainbow  tints  of  the 
spray  as  the  sunlight  strikes  the  air  bubbles  the  waterfall 
"blows";  in  the  green  of  its  waters  turned  to  gray  in  the 
foam;  in  the  reflections  of  mountain,  sky,  and  cloud  in 
the  smooth  stretches  below  the  falls. 

And,  like  pebbles  and  other  little  people,  rivers  love  to 
play  in  the  rain.  My !  What  a  time  I  In  a  storm,  with 
a  gray  flood  pouring  from  the  sky,  you  hear,  mingled  with 
the  voice  of  wind  and  rain,  the  swash  and  gurgle  of  the 
eddies  as  the  river  goes  along  in  its  dance,  wild  with  the 
joy  of  it  all.  In  a  mountain  stream  during  a  heavy  rain, 
with  wind,  you  can  also  hear  the  waves  dashing  against 
the  rocks  along  the  shore  or  in  the  stream,  and  the  smoth- 
ered, bumping,  rumbling  made  by  the  boulders  on  the 
bottom  knocking  against  each  other. 

STORM   CHORUS    OF   THE   MOUNTAIN   TORRENTS 

From  any  high  place  during  a  mountain  storm  you  can 
see  twenty,  yes,  often  a  hundred  torrents,  and  the  noise 
of  the  water  and  the  moving  stones  makes  a  wonderful 
storm  chorus.  Reclus  compares  the  sound  made  by  the 
stones  to  dull  thunder. 

WHERE  TO  LOOK  FOR  HIDING  RIVERS 

Rivers,  both  young  and  old,  play  hide  and  seek.  Possi- 
bly the  older  rivers  get  to  dreaming  of  their  infancy  when 
they  were  springs,  and  want  to  play  they  are  springs 
again;  anyhow,  they  disappear  in  the  ground  in  one  place 
and  then  come  out  laughing  in  another  as  if  they  really 
were  springs !  And  how  they  must  chuckle  to  themselves 


THE  APRIL  RAINS 


79 


THE  LOST  RIVERS  AND   THE  THOUSAND   SPRINGS 

These  are  the  waters  of  some  hidden  tributaries  of  the  Snake  River  gushing  out 
as  springs  from  its  beautiful  banks.  The  group  is  called  "The  Thousand  Springs," 
and  is  supposed  to  be  the  reappearance  of  two  "Lost  Rivers"  that  disappeared 
back  in  the  sand  wastes. 


when  they  fool  people  into  thinking  they  are  brand  new 
rivers !  This  happens  sometimes,  and  so  the  river  gets  a 
different  name  at  the  place  where  it  comes  out  from  the 
name  it  bears  up  to  the  point  where  it  disappears.  Such 
hide-and-seek  rivers  are  found  in  regions  where  it  doesn't 
often  rain.  The  Tujunga,  which  you  cross  in  going  from 
Los  Angeles  to  San  Francisco,  is  such  a  river.  At  one 
place  in  its  course  it  comes  out  of  a  canyon,  looks  around 
a  minute,  and  then  disappears  in  the  pebbles,  sand  and 
gravel  of  the  plain.  Down  it  goes  until  it  reaches  a  bed 
of  hard  rock.  Along  this  underground  bed  it  runs  until 


8o        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

it  gets  to  a  place  north  of  Cahuenga  Peak,  where  it  comes 
up  in  springs  and  flows  into  the  Los  Angeles  River. 

Mountain  lakes  are  where  the  lively  little  torrents  stop 
to  sleep.  "The  sea,"  says  Ruskin,  "seems  only  to  pause; 
the  mountain  lake  to  sleep  and  to  dream." 

But  after  this  sleep  how  they  laugh  and  play — those 
baby  rivers — as  they  go  dancing  over  the  pebbles  and 
down  the  falls;  for  in  these  lakes  they  gather  themselves 
together  into  a  larger  volume  of  water,  and  so,  of  course, 
flow  on  with  increased  energy. 

"As  soon  as  a  stream  is  fairly  over  the  lake  lip  it  breaks 
into  cascades,  never  for  a  moment  halting,  and  scarce 
abating  one  jot  of  its  glad  energy  until  it  reaches  the  next 
basin.  Then  swirling  and  curving  drowsily  (dropping  off 
to  sleep  again !)  through  meadow  and  grove  it  breaks  forth 
anew  into  gray  rapids  and  falls,  leaping  and  gliding  in 
glorious  exuberance  of  wild  bound  and  dance  down  into 
another  and  yet  another  lake  basin."1 

Just  as  it  is  with  human  beings,  a  river  seems  to  grow 
more  thoughtful  and  thrifty  as  it  grows  older;  and,  best 
of  all,  this  thought  and  thrift  is  for  others — for  the  people 
of  the  plant  world  along  its  banks  and  for  its  old  parent, 
the  sea.  With  the  help  of  pebbles  it  puts  money  in  its 
savings  bank  and  pays  it  out  from  time  to  time. 

In  seasons  of  flood  it  carries  loads  and  loads  of  pebbles 
along.  As  the  flood  goes  down  these  pebbles  are  dropped 
and  covered  with  the  sediment  that  settles  along  its  banks. 
Then  these  pebbles  begin  to  decay  and  so  enrich  the  soil. 
Later  along  comes  another  flood,  takes  the  pebbles  out  of 
the  bank,  carries  them  farther  along,  and,  as  the  waters 
1Muir,  "The  Sierra  Nevada  Mountains." 


THE  APRIL  RAINS 


81 


WAYS  OF  A  WANDERING  RIVER 


go  down,  puts  them  back  in  the  bank  again.  In  course  of 
time  this  kind  of  fresh  food  from  the  decaying  pebbles  gets 
carried  into  the  sea,  where  it  helps  to  furnish  food  and 
shell  material  for  the  shell-fish  and  raw  material  to  be 
worked  up  by  the  sea's  rock  mills. 

III.    THE  MACHINERY  OF  THE  RIVERS 

To  do  all  their  great  part  in  the  world's  work  the  rivers 
need  only  time,  enthusiasm,  patience,  machinery,  and 
tools.  All  these  the  rivers  have,  and  the  machinery  they 
use  and  the  engineering  methods  they  follow  are  much 
more  modern  than  we  would  suppose.  Take,  for  example, 
the  way  in  which  rivers  widen  their  banks.  The  current 
cuts  with  the  greatest  force  on  the  outside  of  bends,  and 


82        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

the  motion  and  effect  is  practically  that  of  a  circular  saw. 
This  sawing  is  done  on  the  largest  scale  where  the  current 
meanders.  Swinging  from  side  to  side  it  cuts  away  both 
banks. 

And  what  it  cuts  away  it  spreads  over  the  valley  by  its 
back-and-forth  motion,  much  as  men  spread  dirt  with 
scrapers  when  they  are  grading  a  road. 

That's  how  crooked  rivers  make  broad  valleys.  But 
they  have  to  have  the  help  of  us  pebbles,  too.  We're  hard 
to  get  along  without !  Notice,  the  next  time  the  river  or 
the  creek  is  up,  the  rolling,  hopping  motion  of  the  pebbles 
as  they  are  carried  along  by  the  rushing  water.  It  is  these 
pebbles  grinding  on  the  bottom  and  sides  of  the  river's 
bed  that  help  most  in  this  kind  of  valley  deepening  and 
widening.  In  tne  same  way  we  pebbles  helped  dig  those 
grand  affairs,  the  gorges  and  the  canyons  in  the  moun- 
tains. The  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado  is  a  part  of 
our  work. 

In  the  widening  of  valleys  the  circular  saws  of  crooked 
streams  are  very  useful,  but  there  are  other  things  at 
work.  The  rains  dissolve  the  soil  and  wash  the  banks 
away  and  slope  them  down;  Jack  Frost,  with  his  wedges, 
pries  out  both  soil  and  rock;  the  little  farmers  with  many 
feet — the  burrowing  animals  and  insects — and  the  famous 
farmer  with  no  feet  at  all — the  angleworm — loosen  soil, 
and  so  help  the  river  to  carry  it  away;  and  the  ice,  when 
the  river  breaks  up  in  the  spring,  chisels  off  the  banks  as 
it  passes. 

If  you  have  ever  been  in  a  machine-shop  you  must 
have  noticed  how  a  planing-mill  works  away  on  a  job  it 
has  been  set  to  do,  without  anybody  watching  it  at  all; 


THE  APRIL  RAINS 


HOW  RIVERS   BUILD   STONE  BRIDGES 

Natural  bridges  are  made  by  the  same  agency  that  forms  the  intermittent  springs — 
the  dissolving  power  of  water — and,  like  the  springs,  are  characteristic  of  limestone 
regions  because  limestone  is  readily  dissolved  in  water.  In  the  little  model  of  a 
limestone  region  "a"  and  "a"  are  "sink-holes" — saucer-shaped  hollows  dissolved 
and  washed  into  funnels  through  which  the  surface  water  joins  underground  streams 
such  as  you  see  flowing  beneath  the  two  "bs,"  which  are  natural  bridges  in  the 
making. 

The  lower  picture  shows  just  how  one  of  the  bridge-builders  looks  while  at  work, 
dissolving  and  wearing  down  the  rock.  The  next  two  pictures  will  help  tell  you 
two  other  ways  in  which  rivers  make  their  own  bridges. 


84        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

and  when  it  gets  done  with  its  job  it  stops,  all  by  itself. 
Such  machinery  is  called  "automatic,"  because,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  it  runs  its  own  affairs.  A  river,  in  planing 
down  and  reshaping  valley  scenery,  has  an  automatic  stop. 


AFTER  A  FEW   CUPS  OF  TEA 

When  winding  rivers  get  a  few  cups  of  tea — that  is,  are  in  flood — they  rush  straight 
ahead  and,  while  much  of  the  water  may  for  a  time  still  go  on  around  the  bend, 
some  of  it  is  forced  through  openings  in  the  rock  and  in  time  carves  out  a  bridge. 
How  they  do  this  is  shown  in  the  upper  diagram  on  page  83. 


When  it  has  cut  its  valley  down  to  sea  level  it  stops,  be- 
cause, being  then  no  higher  than  the  sea,  it  can  no  longer 
flow  toward  it. 

But  before  this  automatic  stop  shuts  off  their  machinery 
the  work  that  rivers  do  is  immense.  The  Mississippi 
River  carries  enough  solid  matter  to  the  Gulf  every  year  to 
make  a  mountain  a  mile  square  and  268  feet  high. 


THE  APRIL  RAINS 


YOU  KNOW  THIS  BRIDGE,   OF   COURSE 

The  Natural  Bridge  of  Virginia  is  an  example  of  still  another  style  of  river 
bridge-building.  This  bridge  used  to  be  part  of  the  roof  of  a  cave  and  remained 
after  the  rest  of  the  roof  fell  in. 


When  ordinary  people  want  to  cross  a  mountain  they 
have  to  climb  over  it.  But  do  you  know  what  a  river 
does?  It  cuts  its  way  right  through  and  makes  what  is 
called  a  water-gap — a  great  gate  of  stone  that  is  always 


86        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

open  and  through  which  the  stream  forever  flows.  All 
the  river  used  was  tools  and  time.  The  tools  were  the 
sand  and  pebbles  it  swept  along.  So  in  the  course  of  ages, 
running  like  a  band  saw,  the  Potomac  made  the  water- 
gap  at  Harper's  Ferry,  the  Delaware  River  the  Delaware 
Water-Gap. 

HOW  MOUNTAINS  HELP  MAKE  THE  WATER  GATES 

But  how  could  a  river  do  this  ?  It  couldn't  flow  up  one 
side  of  the  mountain  and  down  the  other,  could  it?  No, 
certainly  not.  What  then?  Wherever  you  find  a  river 
cutting  through  a  mountain  range  you  may  be  sure  the 
river  was  there  before  the  mountains  rose,  and  that  the 
mountains  rose  so  slowly  the  river  kept  right  on  in  its  old 
channel  and  wore  down  the  rock  under  that  channel  as 
fast  as  the  mountains  rose;  while,  on  either  side,  they 
could  rise  as  high  as  they  wanted  to  for  all  the  river  cared  ! 

GROWING  MOUNTAINS   AND   THE   EARTHQUAKES 

But  suppose,  before  I  had  explained  how  water-gaps 
are  made  I  had  told  you  I  could  show  you  a  mountain 
growing.  You  wouldn't  have  believed  it.  Regions  in 
which  mountains  are  still  rising,  as  on  our  Pacific  Coast, 
are  liable  to  earthquakes.  The  reason  is  that  as  moun- 
tains rise  the  rock  layers  of  which  they  are  made  are 
strained  dreadfully.  Every  once  in  a  while  they  crack 
and  the  rocks  on  either  side  of  this  crack  grind  against 
each  other.  This  makes  the  earth  shake,  much  as  the 
house  shakes  when  a  heavy  table  is  pushed  across  a  bare 
floor. 

If  you  want  to  see  a  job  of  river  engineering  that  will 


THE  APRIL  RAINS  87 

make  you  catch  your  breath,  look  over  into  some  of  the 
river  canyons  and  gorges  of  the  West. 

A  mile  isn't  much  straight  ahead,  but  a  mile  straight 
down  and  you  on  your  stomach,  with  your  eyes  just  over 


THE  GREAT  CUMBERLAND  WATER-GAP 

Here  is  the  famous  Cumberland  Gap  that  the  river  cut  through  the  mountains; 
so  cutting  a  great  figure  in  United  States  history,  also,  you  remember.  The  pic- 
ture shows  the  region  as  it  looked  in  early  days. 


the  edge — it's  an  awful  long  way !  Imagine  yourself  look- 
ing down  a  wall  of  rock  like  that,  and  the  bottom  of  the 
abyss  so  far  off  that  it  looks  blue — that's  a  canyon ! 

AND   YET   THAT  LITTLE   RIVER  DID   IT  ALL! 

And  now  we  are  going  down  into  the  vastest  canyon 
in  the  world,  a  canyon  so  vast  that  it  has  already  swal- 


88        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

lowed  practically  all  the  words  in  the  dictionary  suitable 
to  such  scenery  and  still  remains  undescribed — so  all  the 
skilled  writers  say  who  have  tried  their  hands  at  it.  This 
is  the  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado.  Do  you  remember 
how  in  "Alice  in  Wonderland"  the  cat  disappeared  and 
left  nothing  but  its  smile?  Well,  the  first  time  you  see 
the  Grand  Canyon  you  feel  as  if  it  had  swallowed  you  and 
left  nothing  but  your  eyes !  And  when  they  tell  you  that 
it  was  all  done  by  that  little  river  that  you  can  just  make 
out  threading  its  way  along  the  bottom,  you  can't  believe 
it!  The  total  length  of  the  river's  gorge — a  canyon  is 
just  a  long  gorge — is  some  400  miles.  The  part  of  it 
known  as  the  Grand  Canyon  is  a  yawning  abyss  of  stone 
into  which  the  river  walls  widen  for  a  distance  of  42  miles. 
The  Lower  Colorado  River,  that  dug  this  chasm  in  the 
rock,  flows  through  a  vast  table-land  where  rain  seldom 
falls.  But  the  river,  which  rises  in  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
has  a  constant  supply  of  water  from  the  mountain  rains 
and  the  melting  snow.  The  canyons  you  see  branching 
from  the  main  gorge  in  our  picture  were  cut  by  the  Colo- 
rado's tributaries.  Working  together  on  different  sides, 
they  carved  out  those  rock  masses  that  look  like  oriental 
temples  and  have  been  named  accordingly — the  temples 
of  Brahma,  Osiris,  Zoroaster,  and  so  on. 

And  here  in  this  canyon  is  a  splendid  example  of  how 
the  rivers,  in  addition  to  all  their  other  labors,  write  his- 
tory. They  helped  to  lay  down  on  the  borders  of  the 
ancient  sea  the  material  out  of  which  the  rocks  were  made. 
It  is  in  the  leaves  in  such  books  of  stone  that  the  geologist 
reads  the  great  events  of  world-making  history.  More- 
over, the  rivers  may  be  said  to  cut  the  leaves  of  the  book 


THE  APRIL  RAINS  89 

when  they  dig  down  through  them,  as  .in  this  immense 
library  of  the  Grand  Canyon. 

Busy,  busy  all  the  time — these  rivers.     But  although 
they  are  always  at  work  they  not  only  never  forget  to  look 


From  a  photograph  copyrighted  by  Fred  Harvey 

AND   WE  PEBBLES  HELPED   DIG  THE   GRAND   CANYON,  TOO! 

River  water  alone  couldn't  cut  those  canyons— the  Grand  Canyon  and  the  rest. 
The  Colorado  and  its  tributaries  had  to  have  grinding  tools  and  the  tools  were 
the  pebbles  they  dragged  over  their  rock-beds;  and  thus,  in  the  course  of  ages, 
wore  them  down  and  down  and  down. 


beautiful  but  they  beautify  everything  they  touch.  At 
the  outset  the  lines  of  a  river  valley  are  rather  straight  and 
angular,  as  if  the  scenery  were  just  being  blocked  out  by 
an  artist,  but  as  the  valley  grows  older  its  slopes  become 
more  gentle,  the  angles  disappear  into  rounded  forms,  and 
the  river  itself  winds  along  in  graceful  lines,  exactly  repro- 


9o        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


THAT  MIGHTY  RIVER  IN  THE  MEADOWS 


Yon  stream,  whose  sources  run, 
Turned  by  a  pebble's  edge, 

Is  Athabasca,  rolling  towards  the  sun, 
Through  the  cleft  mountain  ledge. 


The  slender  rill  had  strayed, 

But  for  the  slanting  stone,          [braid 
To  evening's  ocean,  with  the  tangled 

Of  foam-flecked  Oregon. 

— HOLMES. 


ducing  what  the  great  English  artist  Hogarth  called  "the 
line  of  beauty." 

Back  of  all  the  work  of  the  rivers  from  year  to  year  and 
age  to  age,  there  seems  always  the  thought  of  beauty  as 
well  as  the  thought  of  use.  They  are  evidently  under  an 
eternal  law  of  service,  of  beauty,  and  of  change. 

"The  hills  are  shadows,  and  they  flow 
From  form  to  form  and  nothing  stands. 
They  melt  like  mists  the  solid  lands; 
Like  clouds  they  shape  themselves  and  go." 


THE  APRIL  RAINS  91 


HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

Isn't  Tennyson's  "Brook"  a  beautiful  title  picture  of  a  baby 
river  and  its  ways? 

Speaking  of  human  nature  in  rivers  and  apparent  differences  in 
disposition,  why  is  it  that  some  of  the  rivers  of  California  run  right 
through  the  mountain  ranges  from  east  to  west — have  evidently 
cut  their  way — while  others  run  along,  meekly  enough,  between 
the  ranges?  I'm  sure  from  what  we  have  learned  about  rivers 
that  you  can  tell  how  this  happened  as  well  as  if  you  had  been 
there  when  the  rivers  were  made;  but  if  you  can't  think — after 
trying  real  hard — you  will  find  the  answer  in  the  Hide  and  Seek 
at  the  end  of  the  next  chapter. 

Beside  being  so  prominent  in  the  literature  of  the  Bible  and  so 
famous  in  history,  the  River  Jordan  is  a  most  curious  and  interest- 
ing stream,  and  every  child  should  know  about  it.  Here  are  some 
of  the  things  you  will  find:  Why  it  is  born  partly  grown,  and 
doesn't  begin  as  a  little  stream,  like  the  Mississippi;  why  it  may 
be  said  to  be  in  both  the  tropical  and  temperate  zones1;  about  its 
two  valleys,  both  of  which  it  uses  at  the  same  time.2 

Another  famous  river  over  in  that  part  of  the  world — it's  the 
biggest  river  in  Western  Asia,  in  fact— was  born  twins.  See  if 
you  can  find  such  a  river  on  the  map.  (The  name  of  it  is  at  the 
end  of  the  next  chapter.)  In  the  days  of  Alexander  the  Great 
these  twin  rivers,  which  now  unite  in  one  after  travelling  along 
independently  for  a  while,  were  a  good  day's  journey  apart  clear 
to  the  end.  In  the  article  on  this  river  in  the  Britannica,  and  in 
books  of  travel  you  will  find  how,  by  a  quaint  and  ingenious  device, 
the  river  is  made  to  pump  itself  up  hill  and  irrigate  the  fields; 
how  history,  clear  back  to  the  beginning  of  civilization,  is  written 
in  the  ruins  of  cities  along  its  banks;  how  it  used  to  put  in  part 
of  its  time  bounding  the  Roman  empire,  and  how  nowadays  it  is 
forced  to  help  support  Arab  river  pirates  and  wild  pigs. 

Now  let's  go  over  into  Africa  with  Doctor  Livingstone  and  see 
how  a  river  can  grind  out  a  big,  deep  stone  jar  in  solid  rock.3 

1  Britannica.  2  International. 

3  "The  Expedition  to  the  Zambesi,"  page  63.  One  of  these  natural 
water-jars  that  Doctor  Livingstone  found  was  as  wide  as  a  well  and 
so  deep  it  kept  the  water  cool  even  under  the  broiling  African  sun. 


92        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Rivers  grind  out  these  pot-holes  much  as  Indian  women  and  the 
American  pioneers  used  to  grind  wheat  and  corn.  (The  river, 
you'll  find,  uses  pebbles  for  millstones.) 

And  what  do  you  think  of  a  waterfall  big  enough  to  swallow  two 
Niagaras?  (It's  the  greatest  waterfall  in  the  world;  so  you  must 
have  learned  its  name  in  your  geography.)  It's  described  on 
page  268  of  Doctor  Livingstone's  book  referred  to  in  the  foot-note. 
The  natives  call  it  "The  Fall  of  the  Thundering  Smoke."  They 
wonder  how  water  can  smoke,  and  so  that  you  can  see  the  "smoke" 
twenty  miles  away.  You'll  wonder,  too,  until  you  learn  the 
reason. 


CHAPTER  V 

(MAY) 

When  April  steps  aside  for  May, 

Like  diamonds  all  the  raindrops  glisten; 

Fresh  violets  open  every  day; 

To  some  new  bird  each  hour  we  listen. 

— Lucy  Larcom. 


THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE 

What  a  wonderful  world  it  is,  this  world  of  green  fields 
and  perfume  and  blossoms  of  pink  and  gold !  Where  did 
it  come  from?  How  did  it  get  here  out  of  the  white  win- 
ter? That  bleak  and  barren  winter  that  lay  all  around  us 
everywhere  only  a  few  short  weeks  ago? 

Just  suppose  we  had  never  seen  apple  trees  in  bloom,  as 
we  are  now  seeing  them  everywhere,  and  somebody  should 
show  us  a  little  brown  seed,  and  a  piece  of  bark,  and  a 
piece  of  root,  and  a  green  leaf,  and  a  blossom,  and  an 
apple,  and  tell  us  they  grew  out  of  each  other — were  all 
made  of  the  very  same  stuff. 

Well,  just  as  sure  as  anything,  you  wouldn't  believe  it. 
I  wouldn't  believe  it.  We  simply  couldn't!  But  we've 
had  this  sort  of  thing  all  around  us  ever  since  we  can 
remember,  and  we've  got  so  used  to  it  we  don't  see  any- 
thing wonderful  about  it.  It  is  wonderful  just  the  same. 
The  Colossus  of  Rhodes,  and  Jupiter  of  Olympia,  and  the 

93 


94   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

lighthouse  of  Alexandria,  and  all  the  other  Seven  Wonders 
of  the  World  that  people  used  to  go  so  far  to  see,  weren't 
anything  to  it. 

And  to  this  day,  how  it  all  comes  about  is  as  much  of  a 
mystery  as  ever.  Yet  Nature  does  it  right  before  our 
eyes,  and  over  and  over  and  over  again !  Even  I,  old  as  I 
am,  and  as  much  as  I  know,  7  don't  know  how  she  does 
it,  but  I  do  know  how  it  all  started;  how  Nature  first  be- 
gan to  change  one  thing  into  another.  It  was  when  she 
began  making  marbles,  granites,  and  other  kinds  of  rock 
out  of  other  kinds.  That  was  ages  before  she  changed 
little  brown  seeds  into  big  trees  with  pink  blossoms  and  red 
apples  on  them,  or  little  brown  cocoons  into  big  golden 
butterflies,  or  anything  like  that. 


I.    IN  THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE 

Ahem !    Ahem  !     (Pebble  coughing.) 

I  caught  cold  some  several  million  years  ago  and  I 
haven't  got  over  it  yet.  That's  why  I'm  a  granite  pebble 
instead  of  a  slate  pebble,  or  a  sandstone  pebble,  or  any- 
thing common.  It's  a  part  of  the  story  of  the  fairyland 
of  change,  this  cold  of  mine. 

Ahem! 

Would  you  mind  getting  me  a  lump  of  sugar?  I  don't 
want  it  for  my  cold — it  never  does  that  any  good — but 
because  a  lump  of  sugar  goes  so  well  with  this  part  of  my 
story. 

You  notice  the  sugar  lump  is  made  up  of  little  crystals, 
little  building  blocks  just  as  I  am,  just  as  all  granites  are. 
And  the  crystals  in  the  sugar  and  in  the  stone  were  made 


THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE  95 

in  the  same  way— by  first  heating  and  then  cooling  the 
material  out  of  which  they  are  made. 

When  the  earth's  surface  first  cooled,  the  melted  rock  is 
supposed  to  have  changed  to  granite.     Melted  rock,  under 


THE   CRYSTAL  FAIRIES  IN  THE   SUGAR-BOWL 

the  same  conditions,  does  that  to-day.  So,  for  a  while, 
granite  must  have  been  all  the  kind  of  rock  there  was. 
There  was  as  yet  no  sandstone,  no  shells  or  bones  to  make 
limestone,  no  pebbles  to  help  make  conglomerate  or  "pud- 
ding stone,"  no  ground-up  rock  and  soil  to  make  slate. 

The  rocks  of  the  earth  have  been  made  over  so  many 
times  that  it  is  not  probable  that  any  of  the  granites  now 
" living"  (so  to  speak)  are  the  same  rocks  that  were  made 


96        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

when  the  earth  first  cooled,  but  you  can  see  that  we  have 
a  right  to  say  what  I  was  careful  to  say  when  I  introduced 
myself  to  you  in  the  first  chapter,  that  we  belong  to  one 
of  the  very  oldest  families — we  Granites. 

Ahem! 

There  is  a  variety  of  rock — a  crystallized  rock — with 
bands  all  through  it,  called  gneiss  (say  "nice").  Gneiss 
is  made  from  all  kinds  of  rock  including,  of  course,  con- 
glomerate; that  is  to  say  "pudding  stone"  *  warmed  over. 

"  And  what  they  did  not  eat  that  night,  the  queen 
next  morning  fried ! " 

DOWN  IN  THE   GREAT  MELTING-POT 

But  how  is  old  rock  warmed  over  and  made  into  new? 
You  might  easily  guess  that  as  the  heart  of  the  earth  is 
melted  rock  the  rock  layers  lying  next  to  it  would  be 
melted,  too,  and  so  started  on  their  way  to  becoming  crys- 
tallized rock.  Crystallization  in  rock  takes  place  from 
the  surface  down,  in  the  same  way  that  maple  syrup  turns 
to  sugar,  as  it  does  if  allowed  to  stand  undisturbed.  So, 
as  the  central  mass  of  rock  is  cooling  from  above  toward 
the  centre,  we  may  suppose  granite  is  still  being  formed 
away  down  there,  miles  under  our  feet. 

But  there  are  other  ways  in  which  rocks  make  their 
own  heat — rocks  far  above  this  central  molten  heart  of 
the  world.  One  of  these  ways  might  remind  you  of  how 
the  mother  hen  gets  her  chickens  to  come  out  of  the  eggs, 
for  rocks  hatch  out  new  rocks  by  sitting  on  one  another ! 

111  Pudding  stone"  is  a  rock  with  pebbles  all  through  it,  like  the 
plums  in  a  Christmas  pudding.  Its  book  name  is  "conglomerate.'- 


THE   FAIRYLAND   OF  CHANGE 


97 


The  pressure  of  the  upper  rocks  generates  heat  in  those  be- 
neath. 

Then  when  these  deeply  buried  rocks  come  up  into  the 
upper  world  as  parts  of  mountain  chains,  and  the  covering 


THREE   CHAPTERS  IN  THE  STORY  OF  MARBLE 

If  you're  ever  in  New  York  City  up  around  ip2d  Street,  you  can  read  the  three 
chapters  in  the  life  of  a  piece  of  marble  right  in  the  rocks  themselves,  for  there 
you'll  see  this  mass  of  rock  with  that  granite  dike  pushing  its  way  through.  The 
rock  on  either  side  of  the  dike  is  limestone,  and  this  limestone,  owing  to  the  heat 
of  the  lava  which  afterward  hardened  and  became  a  "dike,"  is  full  of  crystals; 
that  is,  began  to  turn  to  marble  because  of  the  heat.  See  how  the  lava  crumpled 
the  limestone  as  it  pushed  its  way  up  into  the  original  crack? 

of  the  softer  rocks  is,  by  the  rivers  and  by  weathering, 
worn  away,  we  find  the  granite.  The  wrinkling  of  the 
rocks  which  makes  mountains  also  creates  immense  pres- 
sure, and  this  is  another  great  source  of  made-over  rock. 
Such  rock  is  found  almost  entirely  in  mountain  regions. 
Some  rocks,  as  shown  in  pebbles  stretched  out  like  a  piece 
of  gum,  are  heated  by  pressure  without  being  crystallized. 


98        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Often  one  of  these  stretched  pebbles  is  the  only  thing  in  a 
crystallized  rock  that  shows  what  kind  of  rock  it  was  orig- 
inally, all  the  finer  material  in  it  has  been  so  changed.  The 
deeper  down  in  the  earth  the  rocks  are  the  more  apt  they 
are  to  be  crystallized,  because  the  rocks  piled  above  them 
help  to  hold  in  the  heat,  just  as  thick  blankets  keep  you 
warmest  on  a  cold  winter  night. 

KINDS  OF  "METAMORPHIC"  ROCK 

Rock  of  any  kind  may  be  changed  to  crystallized  rock. 
Where  the  conditions  are  not  favorable  for  crystallization 
the  rock  is  made  more  solid,  and  material  soaked  out  of 
the  rocks  above  filters  down  into  it.  The  lower  layers  of 
sandstone  may  become  almost  as  solid  as  glass,  and  are 
then  called  "quartzite."  Clay  rocks  are  hardened  into 
slate.  Rocks  changed  in  any  of  these  ways  are  called 
"metamorphic"  rock,  from  two  Greek  words  meaning  "to 
form  over."  But  by  " metamorphic "  is  usually  meant 
rock  that  has  been  crystallized. 

NICE   HATCHING   TEMPERATURE   FOR   ROCKS 

I  compared  the  hatching  of  new  rocks  to  the  hatching 
of  new  chickens,  because  it  is  done  by  the  rocks  sitting  on 
one  another.  But  chicken  hatching  and  rock  "hatching" 
are  alike  in  still  another  way.  The  rocks  need  heat,  but 
not  too  much  heat.  Too  much  heat  melts  them.  It  is 
only  when  they  have  cooled  down  a  good  deal  that  they 
begin  to  crystallize;  and  that,  you  see,  wastes  time. 

A  nice  hatching  temperature  for  rocks  is  between  500 
and  1000  degrees  Fahrenheit. 

But  we  might  also  compare  Mother  Nature's  way  of 


THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE  99 

changing  rocks  to  the  cooking  that  goes  on  in  our  kitchens. 
She  uses  not  only  heat,  but  water  and  other  things,  includ- 
ing salt  and  soda.  Both  the  salt  and  some  of  the  water 
in  the  rocks  comes  from — you'd  hardly  guess  it — the  seas ! 
Not  the  seas  of  to-day,  but  the  seas  of  yesterday,  when 
these  rocks  were  made.  Then  the  pores  were  filled  with 
water  and  the  water  has  been  kept  shut  in  down  there  by 
the  rocks  above  ever  since. 

From  this  sea  water  comes  the  salt.  The  salt  in  the 
water,  when  heated,  helps  to  dissolve  the  rocks  so  that  the 
different  materials  in  them  can  separate  and  come  together 
again  in  new  ways,  and  so  form  new  rocks.  You  know 
when  you  go  to  the  lavatory  to  change  your  hands  from 
dark  to  light  what  a  lot  of  difference  it  makes  whether  the 
water  is  hot  or  cold  and  whether  you  use  soap.  The  soap 
helps  dissolve  the  dirt  on  your  hands  just  as  the  salt 
helps  dissolve  the  rocks. 

The  soda  which  Nature  also  uses  is  particularly  good  for 
dissolving  rock  that  will  hardly  dissolve  without  it;  silica, 
for  instance,  out  of  which  are  made  the  hardest  of  the 
sand  grains,  the  sand  in  sandstone,  the  sharp,  glassy  edges 
of  grass  blades,  and  the  blades  of  wheat,  and  the, stalks 
of  corn.  Whenever  there  is  a  great  deal  of  silica  in  rock 
you  find  soda  mixed  right  with  it.  This,  having  the 
rocks  already  salted  and  mixed  with  soda  before  putting 
them  in  the  oven,  Mother  Nature  has  always  found  so 
convenient ! 

ONE   PEBBLE   MAY   PLAY   MANY   PARTS 

I,  in  my  time,  may  have  been  many  kinds  of  rock. 
First,  heaved  up  out  of  the  sea  by  the  earliest  wrinkling  of 


ioo      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

the  cooling  earth  as  granite;  then  weathered  away  into 
soil  and  carried  by  rivers  to  the  sea,  where  I  was  remade 
the  first  time,  maybe,  as  part  of  the  "dough"  in  a  pudding 
stone;  then  up  again  in  an  earth  wrinkle  and  again  back 
to  sea,  this  time  to  be  made  into  some  one  of  the  clay 
stones,  and  then  back  to  granite  again. 

Anyhow  here  I  am,  a  little  freckled  granite  pebble  talk- 
ing myself  red  in  the  face  because  I've  got  so  much  to  say, 
such  wonderful  things  to  tell,  and  only  a  few  hundred  pages 
to  tell  it  in ! 

II.    How  Do  THEY  KNOW? 

But,  after  all,  how  do  they  know  that  one  rock  changes 
into  another?  No  one  ever  caught  a  rock  doing  this,  did 
they? 

Not  quite,  but  almost.  To  explain,  I  must  first  tell  you 
about  the  fossils  that  are  found  in  stone.  Haven't  you 
often  noticed  in  marble  curious  figures  that  reminded  you 
of  sea-shells?  They  were  sea-shells  but  have  been  turned 
to  stone,  and  things  similarly  changed  while  still  keeping 
their  original  form  are  called  ''fossils." 

When  the  plants  and  the  shell  creatures  of  the  sea  die 
they  fall  to  the  bottom,  and  mud  and  sand  settles  over 
them  and  closes  them  in,  much  as  you  shut  leaves  and 
flowers  between  the  pages  of  a  book.  But  while  the  book 
presses  the  leaves  of  flowers  out  of  shape  these  bodies  of 
the  water-plants  and  shell  creatures  are  slowly  enclosed  in 
a  soft  mass  of  mud  that  doesn't  change  their  shapes  at  all. 
Then  the  particles  that  go  to  make  up  the  soft  bodies  of 
these  buried  things  are  slowly  dissolved  away,  and  the 
minerals  in  the  water  and  mud  above  them  soak  in  and 


THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE 


101 


take  their  places.  It's  like  passenger  after  passenger  in  a 
car  getting  up  and  other  passengers  taking  the  vacant 
places.  Finally  this  mass  of  limey  shells  becomes  buried 
deep  under  the  sea,  is  turned  to  limestone,  and  when  in 


From  a  photograph  by  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History 

STORY  OF  THE  LITTLE  JEWEL-BOX 

A  kind  of  jewel-box?  Yes,  the  kind  geologists  call  a  "geode."  It  began  as  a 
piece  of  limestone  in  which  the  underground  waters  had  dissolved  a  cavity.  But 
these  waters  had  already,  in  solution,  quartz  which  they  had  dissolved  from  quartz 
rock,  and  this  quartz,  deposited  little  by  little  in  the  cavity,  formed  into  crystals. 
The  quartz  also  made  the  surrounding  walls  more  solid,  so  that  when  the  mass  of 
limestone  containing  this  pocket  was  cut  away  by  erosion  this  jewel-box  remained, 
and,  being  rolled  about  in  streams  or  by  the  lap  and  plunge  of  waves,  it  was  rounded. 


course  of  time  this  part  of  the  seashore  rises — as  we  know 
shores  have  a  way  of  doing — or  is  wrinkled  up  into  a 
mountain,  this  limestone  becomes  a  part  of  the  face  of  the 
land. 

WOULDN'T  WE  SAY  THE  SAME  THING? 

Now  suppose  where  some  great  granite  rock  stood  up 
through  layers  of  other  kinds  of  rock — looking  as  if  it  had 


102      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

pushed  itself  through  like  the  great  granite  boss  on  which 
Edinburgh  Castle  stands — you  found  that  wherever  this 
intruder  touched  the  other  rock  that  rock  was  crystal- 
lized. If  we  had  just  found  all  this  out  for  ourselves, 
as  the  geology  people  found  it,  we  would  say,  just  as  they 
said: 

"I  wonder  what  the  granite  did  to  the  limestone  and  the 
other  rocks  around  it  to  make  them  'sugar/  or,  as  we  say 
when  speaking  of  rocks,  '  crystallize '  ?  Syrup  sugars  when 
it  is  heated  and  then  cooled  without  stirring.  I  wonder  if 
this  intruding  mass  that  is  now  granite  didn't  spout  up, 


FATHER,   GRANDFATHER,  AND  THE  CHILDREN  IN  THE 
PORPHYRY  FAMILY 

In  this  piece  of  porphyry  you  see  three  generations,  all  living  under  one  roof,  as 
it  were.  Notice  that  six-sided  crystal  near  the  centre?  Compare  it  with  other 
good-sized  crystals  that  haven't  any  distinctive  shape.  The  reason  for  the  dif- 
ference is  that  the  shapeless  ones  have  had  some  of  their  substance  taken  away  to 
form  the  smaller  crystals.  The  dark  mass  is  lava.  In  it  the  big  crystals  formed. 
Then,  from  most  of  the  big  crystals  the  lava  reabsorbed  material,  and  this  material 
later  turned  into  little  crystals— the  "grandchildren"  of  the  three  generations. 


THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE  103 


SPLITTING   MARBLE  ROCKS  IN  THE  QUARRY 

This  is  a  scene  in  a  marble-quarry.  The  men  are  splitting  up  a  i2o-ton  block. 
A  writer  in  Scribner's  Magazine,  in  which  this  illustration  originally  appeared,  also 
describes  the  process.  The  wedges,  carefully  greased,  are  inserted  in  the  drill-holes 
which,  for  a  horizontal  split,  are  neither  close  together  nor  very  deep,  as  that  is 
the  natural  plane  of  cleavage  between  the  strata.  Two  men  with  sledges  go  down 
the  line  giving  each  wedge  a  blow — not  too  hard.  Then  two  more  men  follow, 
and  in  go  the  wedges  a  little  farther.  You  see  it  wouldn't  do  to  rush  matters,  or 
you'd  fracture  the  marble.  The  operation  is  so  delicate,  indeed,  that  the  foreman 
himself  gives  the  final  blows.  Then  the  marble  cracks  from  hole  to  hole.  For  the 
vertical  splits  the  holes,  you  notice,  are  closer  together.  They  are  also  deeper. 


in  melted  form,  from  down  in  the  earth,  and  heat  the  rocks 
on  either  side  as  it  burst  its  way  through.  Then  both 
this  hot  rock  and  its  neighbors  cooled  and  crystallized. 
That's  it!" 

In  some  places  you  find  these  granite  masses  in  great 
bosses,  or  domelike  rocks;  elsewhere  in  long  strips,  like  an 
iron  bar  thrust  through  other  rocks;  in  still  other  places  in 
great  slabs  between  other  rocks,  like  a  warming  pan  pushed 


104      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

between  the  bed-sheets  on  a  cold  winter  night;  but  every- 
where it  touches  other  rocks  these  neighbors  are  crystal- 
lized. 

Now,  coming  back  to  our  friends  the  fossils,  we  some- 
times find  limestone  bordering  one  of  these  intrusive  mar- 
ble rocks  with  fossils  in  it,  shading  off  into  limestone  con- 
taining the  same  kind  of  fossils.  As  you  get  closer  to  the 
granite  mass  the  fossils  in  the  marble  gradually  fade  away 
until  you  come  to  marble  in  which  there  are  no  fossils  at 
all. 

So  there  we  get  the  whole  story  of  the  life,  not  only  of 
marble  but  of  granite,  and  what  happened  to  them  in 
"The  Fairyland  of  Change"  and  how  it  happened: 

Chapter  I. — The  limestone  was  made  in  the  sea  and  the 
shell  creatures  helped  to  make  it. 

Chapter  II. — Hot  melted  rock  from  the  inside  of  the 
earth  broke  its  way  up  through  these  limestone  beds. 

Chapter  III. — Then,  as  the  melted  rock  cooled,  it  changed 
to  granite,  and  the  limestone  on  either  side,  being  first 
heated  and  then  cooled,  crystallized  and  changed  to 
marble. 

Men  of  science  have  still  other  ways  of  working  out  this 
problem  as  to  whether  and  how  and  why  one  kind  of  rock 
changes  into  another. 

"But,"  we  might  say,  "aren't  they  satisfied?  We  are. 
It's  all  plain  enough  to  us  now  that  one  kind  of  rock  does 
change  into  another.  Then  why  do  these  geologist  people 
go  on  getting  more  evidence  when  they've  already  got 
enough?  It's  like  a  boy  learning  two  lessons  when  he 
only  has  to  recite  in  one;  and  whoever  heard  of  such 
a  thing!" 


THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE  105 

THESE  BOYS  JUST  LOVE  TO  STUDY 

The  answer  is  that  this  " going  on"  is  one  of  the  many 
delights  of  study,  particularly  in  Nature's  books,  when 
once  you  get  the  habit. 

Among  other  things,  the  scientists  search  the  pockets 
of  the  rocks,  so  to  speak,  for  further  evidence  as  to  whether 
one  kind  changes  into  another.  Chemistry  is  a  great  help 
in  doing  this,  and,  of  course,  the  microscope.  They  find 


* 


From  a  photograph  by  Frith  &•  Co.,  Ltd.,  Reigate 

THE  MARBLE  ROCKS  AT  JABALPUR 

The  gorge  of  the  "Marble  Rocks,"  near  Jabalpur,  India,  is  a  mile  long  and  of 
an  unearthly  beauty  of  which  even  this  little  picture  will  give  you  some  idea. 
The  walls  gleam  white  and  golden  in  the  sun.  They  are  not  really  marble  but 
limestone,  which,  as  you  will  learn  in  this  chapter,  is  the  stone  that  becomes  marble 
in  "the  fairy-land  of  change."  It  looks  as  if  nature  had  begun  the  making  of  mar- 
ble columns  in  those  cliffs,  doesn't  it?  This  is  because  the  cliff  is  cut  up  by  joints. 
You  can  also  make  out  in  one  of  the  "pillars"  the  strata,  or  horizontal  divisions  of 
the  rock,  as  it  was  laid  down  in  the  sea. 


io6      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

in  this  way  that  rocks  that  are  full  of  crystals,  such  as 
granite  and  marble,  and  that  look  so  different  from  the 
rocks  that  are  not  crystallized — such  as  limestone  and  sand- 
stone— have  in  them  the  very  same  substances — silica, 
lime,  potash,  iron,  and  so  on. 

And  again  they  put  the  oysters  on  the  witness  stand. 
(You  remember  how,  long  ago,  oysters  helped  tell  that 
mountains  were  once  a  part  of  the  sea  bottom.)  They 
put  a  piece  of  limestone  in  a  certain  acid,  and  it  bub- 
bles and  gives  off  a  certain  kind  of  gas.  Then  they  do  the 
same  thing  to  an  oyster-shell,  and  it  gives  out  the  same 
kind  of  gas.  Then  they  try  it  on  a  piece  of  marble  and 
out  comes  that  very  gas  again!  So  all  three — the  lime- 
stone,, the  oyster-shell,  and  the  marble — must  be  pretty 
close  relations.  Marble  is  just  oyster  and  other  shells 
warmed  up  and  then  allowed  to  cool. 

But  they  don't  stop  here — these  students  of  the  rocks. 
It  isn't  enough  that  all  these  facts  point  to  one  conclusion. 
They  want  to  actually  try  it  out.  So  what  do  they  do  but 
change  chalk — which  is  a  kind  of  very  soft  limestone — 
into  marble  in  the  laboratory?  This  they  do  by  heating 
the  chalk  and  then  cooling  it  under  immense  pressure. 

III.    THE  FAIRIES  OF  THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE 

If  there  really  are  fairies  in  this  deep-down  fairyland  of 
change — and  surely  there  must  be — I  should  say  they  were 
the  very  same  fairies  we  find  in  a  lump  of  sugar — the  crys- 
tals. For  it  is  when  these  crystals  take  different  shapes — 
the  very  thing  fairies  are  always  doing,  you  know — that 
things  change  into  something  else,  so  different  you  can 


THE  FAIRYLAND   OF  CHANGE 


107 


hardly  believe  it.  One  could  easily  believe  that  charcoal 
and  coal  are  related,  they  look  so  much  alike  in  the  face; 
but  who  would  say  that  a  piece  of  charcoal  and  a  diamond 
were  made  of  the  very  same  stuff?  They  are.  But  dia- 


D  E  F 

SIX  MEMBERS  OF  THE  CRYSTAL  FAMILY 

Introducing  six  interesting  members  of  the  crystal  family.  The  crystals  of 
common  salt  and  of  gold,  among  others,  take  the  form  shown  at  A.  Alum  and 
diamonds  crystallize  as  shown  at  C;  while  B  and  F  belong  to  a  system  of  crystals 
which  we  find  built  up  into  ice  and  arsenic.  D  and  E  are  building-blocks  for  green 
vitriol,  borax,  and  sulphate  of  soda. 


monds  are  made  of  crystals  and  charcoal  is  not;  and  that 
must  be  it.  The  carbon  of  the  charcoal  was  never  touched 
by  the  wand  of  the  Crystal  Fairy. 

A  strange  thing  is  that  big  crystals  are  always  made  up 
of  little  crystals.  So  what  looks  like  one  crystal  is  really 
a  United  States  of  crystals,  all  like  each  other  and  each 
like  all  of  them  put  together,  much  as  our  federal  govern- 
ment repeats  the  form  of  the  State  governments,  and  the 


io8      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


State  governments  duplicate  the  government  at  Washing- 
ton on  a  smaller  scale. 
But  why  do  the  little  crystals  always  come  together  in 


THE   SAND   GRAINS  AND  THE  CRYSTAL  FAIRIES 

The  crystal  fairies  often  give  battered  sand  grains  a  new  lease  of  life  and  these 
pictures  show  how  they  do  it.  Fig.  "a"  is  a  single  sand  grain  which  has  grown 
into  crystal  form;  "b"  shows  parallel  growths  about  a  grain;  "c"  is  a  group  of 
neighboring  grains  that  have  crowded  each  other  so  in  their  growth  that  the  crys- 
tal facets  have  been  destroyed.  Sounds  odd  to  speak  of  sand  grains  "growing," 
doesn't  it?  But  they  do! 

just  such  a  way  as  to  make  big  crystals  shaped  exactly  like 
themselves  ? 

Goodness  knows  !  •    - 

But  whatever  the  how  and  the  why  of  it  may  be,  not 
only  do  the  crystal  people  stick  as  closely  to  the  family 
pattern  in  dress  as  the  Scotch  Highlanders  do  to  the  plaids 
of  their  clans,  but  the  crystals  are  clannish  in  another 
way.  When  a  clay  rock,  for  example,  is  dissolved  by  the 
heat,  moisture,  and  chemicals  down  in  the  land  of  change, 
the  particles  of  the  same  kind  that  are  scattered  through 
it  hunt  each  other  out,  and  ever  after  cling  together,  like 
Emmy  Lou  and  her  "nintimate  friends."  You've  noticed 


THE  FAIRYLAND   OF  CHANGE  109 

how  "spotty"  granite  is,  haven't  you?  This  is  because  it 
is  made  up  of  different  kinds  of  minerals;  but,  although  the 
crystals  in  all  follow  the  granite  pattern,  the  particles  of 
each  kind  of  mineral  "flock  together."  The  feldspars  and 
the  micas  never  mix. 

JUST   TRY  IT  WITH  A   PIECE   OF   PAPER 

Now  take  a  piece  of  writing  paper  and  roll  it  into  a  tube 
and  I'll  show  you  something  else.  Stand  the  roll  up  be- 
tween your  two  hands  and  press  down  on  the  top.  It  takes 
a  good  deal  of  pressure  to  bend  or  break  it,  doesn't  it? 
Now  lay  it  on  its  side  and  squeeze.  It  breaks  right  away. 

But  how  should  the  crystals  in  a  piece  of  granite  know 
that  a  column  of  anything  will  stand  so  much  more  weight 
when  the  .pressure  comes  on  the  ends  than  when  it  comes 
on  the  sides?  They  seem  to  know;  for  I'll  tell  you  what 
they  do,  away  down  there  in  the  dark  of  the  earth.  The 
crystals  stand  at  right  angles  to  the  pressure  on  the  rock 
in  which  they  are  forming.  Sometimes,  because  of  the 
movements  of  the  earth  as  it  shrinks  and  cracks,  the  crys- 
tals already  formed  in  granite  are  crushed  over  on  their 
sides.  Then,  in  course  of  time,  they  form  again,  but  this 
time  they  stand  upright,  with  their  "heads  and  shoulders" 
against  the  burden — little  Atlases  supporting  the  world ! 
And  they  not  only  manage  to  get  up  and  stand  up  straight 
when  re-formed  under  pressure,  but  they  stand  closer  to- 
gether than  they  did  before;  they  close  up  ranks,  like  sol- 
diers with  serious  business  before  them. 

A  crystal  is  made  up  of  molecules,  that  is  to  say,  little 
parts  of  itself.  You  can't  see  a  molecule;  you  just  have  to 
think  it.  Each  different  thing  in  the  world — as  salt  and 


no      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

sugar,  boys  and  bumble-bees,  little  girls  and  butterflies — 
is  made  up  of  its  own  kind  of  molecules  or  little  parts  of 
itself.  In  order  to  grasp  the  idea  of  certain  scientific  facts, 
the  men  of  science  thought  of  the  molecules  themselves  as 
being  made  of  little  bits  of  themselves,  which  the  scientists 
called  "atoms."  Now  they  find  that  it  is  necessary — in 
order  to  work  out  still  further  their  ideas  of  how  things  are 
made  and  done  and  changed,  in  this  wonderful  mystery 
we  call  the  world — to  imagine  these  atoms  as  made  up  of 
what  they  call  "electrons."  You  mustn't  think,  however, 
that  this  is  all  mere  fancy.  We  can,  of  course,  think  of 
anything  as  made  up  of  small  particles  or  parts  of  itself 
which  we  can  call  "molecules,"  and  that  these  molecules 
are  made  of  still  smaller  parts  which  we  can  call  "atoms." 
But  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  while  each  different  kind 
of  thing  is  made  of  its  own  kind  of  molecules  and  their 
atoms,  all  the  atoms  are  made  of  the  same  thing — elec- 
trons or  little  bits  of  electricity.  For  reasons  which  need 
not  be  gone  into  here,  it  is  known  that  electrons  actually 
exist.  These  electrons  are  so  much  smaller  than  an  atom 
that  there  is  as  much  room  for  them  to  move  around  in  an 
atom  as  there  is  for  the  planets  to  move  around  the  sun. 

And  they  do  move — travelling  round  and  round.  There 
are,  even  in  so  small  a  thing  as  a  grain  of  sand,  untold 
numbers  of  these  circling  worlds;  systems  like  the  sun 
with  its  planets  and  other  vast  star  systems  of  the  sky. 

And  that,  it  is  thought,  may  be  one  of  the  secrets  of  the 
continual  change  of  things;  clay  rock  changing  to  granite, 
granite  to  soil,  soil  to  fruit,  fruit  to  children,  and  so  on — 
everything  on  the  move  and  the  electrons  doing  the  mov- 
ing— carrying  the  changes,  so  to  speak — these  wonderful 
little  myriad  messenger  boys  of  the  universe ! 


THE  FAIRYLAND  OF  CHANGE  in 


HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

Don't  imagine,  for  all  I've  talked  so  long  about  them,  that  I've 
told  you  everything  there  is  to  know  about  the  crystal  fairies. 
For  example,  did  you  know  that  if  it  wasn't  for  the  crystal  people 
we  wouldn't  have  any  ice?  (Ice.) 

You  will  also  find  that  if  it  wasn't  for  ice — ice  and  the  Greeks — 
we  wouldn't  have  the  word  "crystal"  at  all.  (Crystal.) 

One  of  the  most  striking  things  in  the  whole  conduct  of  these 
clever  crystal  folks  you  will  find  in  reading  about  ice.  If  it  wasn't 
for  a  peculiar — a  very  peculiar — habit  the  ice  crystals  have,  all 
the  waters  of  the  world  that  ever  freeze  at  all,  would  freeze  solid 
to  the  bottom  and  never  would  thaw  out ! 

I'll  tell  you  this  much  about  it: 

While  everything  else  in  the  world — including  boys  and  girls — 
contracts  when  it  gets  cold,  ice  expands,  and  so  becomes  lighter 
than  water,  and  so  floats. 

And  yet  the  ice  crystals  know  how  to  contract  as  well  as  expand, 
and  that's  why  ice  sometimes  builds  stone  walls,  as  we  will  see 
when  we  come  to  study  "The  Stones  of  the  Field"  in  July. 

Shaking  still  water  that  is  cold  enough  to  freeze  but  hasn't  frozen 
makes  the  crystal  fairies  get  very  busy  in  their  ice  factories.  And 
it  looks  very  much  as  if  the  fairies  themselves  warmed  up  with 
their  work;  for,  after  this  shaking,  the  temperature  of  the  water 
rises  ten  degrees  at  the  very  same  time  it  is  freezing ! 

You  will  also  find  that  when  the  weather  is  cold  enough  ice  itself 
freezes,  gets  harder  and  harder  with  the  cold;  that  ice  will  melt 
ice;  that  two  blocks  of  ice  will  grow  into  one  if  you  give  them  a 
chance;  that  ice  crystals  are  apt  to  be  born  twins;  that  these  twin 
crystals  are  fond  of  gardening — at  least,  they  raise  "ice  flowers"; 
that  the  ice  crystals  are  so  punctual  in  their  coming  and  going  in 
water  that  they  are  used  to  help  place  the  markings  on  thermom- 
eters just  right,  so  that  we  can  tell  exactly  how  cold  or  hot  we  are. 

All  this  just  about  the  crystals  of  the  ice,  but  the  work  of  the 
crystal  people  in  making  snowflakes  is  even  more  wonderful.  In 
the  bound  volumes  of  St.  Nicholas  for  March,  1882,  in  your  Public 
Library  you  will  find  a  most  interesting  account  of  a  man  in  Ver- 
mont who  began  studying  snowflakes  and  taking  their  pictures 
when  he  was  a  boy.  He's  known  all  over  the  world  as  the  great 
authority  on  snowflakes.  In  the  Encyclopedia  Americana  you 


112   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

will  find  a  long  article  by  him  in  which  he  tells  the  many  interesting 
things  he  has  learned  about  the  ways  of  the  fairies  of  the  snow 
And  how  many  pictures  do  you  suppose  he  has  in  his  snowflake 
gallery  now  ?  Over  a  thousand,  and  no  two  alike ! 

Just  to  think!  Some  of  these  wonderful  little  people  of  the 
fairyland  of  change  sit  at  the  table  with  us  at  every  meal — the 
sugar  crystals.  And  they  are  among  the  most  interesting  mem- 
bers of  the  family.  Under  the  word  Sugar  you  will  find  that  the 
sugar  crystals  themselves  eat  and  grow.  But  what  do  you  suppose 
they  eat  ?  Not  sugar.  (You  may  easily  guess,  however,  they  have 
a  sweet  tooth.) 

Yes,  and  at  their  home  table,  before  they  come  to  your  home 
table,  they  have  their  regular  meals,  and  they  are  not  allowed  a 
second  helping  until  they  have  eaten  the  first ! 

ANSWERS  TO  CONUNDRUMS  IN  H.  &  S.  No.  4 

The  east  and  west  rivers  in  California  were  there  before  the 
mountains  rose  and  so  cut  their  way  through;  while  the  north  and 
south  rivers  between  the  ranges  owe  their  origin  to  the  mountains 
themselves. 

The  big  twin  river  referred  to  is  the  Euphrates. 

The  greatest  falls  in  the  world  are  the  Victoria  Falls  on  the 
Zambesi. 


CHAPTER  VI 

(JUNE) 

The  rivers  laugh  in  the  valley, 
Hills  dreaming  of  their  past, 

And  all  things  silently  opening- 
Opening  into  the  Vast. 


That  pebble  is  older  than  Adam, 

Secrets  it  hath  to  tell. 
These  rocks — they  cry  out  history, 

Could  I  but  listen  well. 
-William  C.  Gannet :  "Sunday  on  the  Hill-Top. 


THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS 
I.    IN  THE  BAD  LAND  LIBRARY 

It  has  been  said1  that  crystals  are  dreaming  of  life,  they 
act  so  like  living  things.  We  may  imagine  the  crystals  in 
the  granite  rocks  which  first  came  into  being  with  the 
cooling  of  the  fire  globe,  dreaming  out  the  long  procession 
of  life  and  change  that  followed  them. 

But  what  nightmares  they  must  have  had  when  they 
foresaw  such  creatures  as  the  one  on  page  23,  that  gro- 
tesque, that  unbelievable  combination  of  bird  and  beast, 
the  cerotosaurus !  The  bones  of  such  monsters  are  one  of 
the  most  astonishing  secrets  of  the  hills. 

1  John  Burroughs:  "The  Breath  of  Life." 


U4      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

DIFFERENT   KINDS    OF    MOUNTAINS 

The  Bad  Lands  of  South  Dakota,  in  which,  as  in  other 
parts  of  our  great  West,  so  many  bones  of  the  ancients 
have  been  found,  got  their  name  because  they  are  so  bad 
for  travelling;  that  is  to  say,  if  you  are  in  anything  of  a 
hurry.  But  if  you  are  just  looking  around — during  your 
vacation,  in  June,  say — they  are  anything  but  bad  lands. 
They  are  full  of  interesting  secrets.  This  secret  of  the 
ancient  bones  is  only  one  of  them.  Another  thing  they 
lead  us  into  is  the  secret  history  of  the  hills  themselves; 
and  as  this  particular  book  is  mainly  about  the  face  of  the 
earth,  the  story  back  of  the  landscape,  as  it  appears  to  the 
traveller,  we  shall  give  the  rest  of  this  chapter  to  the  origin 


HOW  THE  BAD  LANDS  GOT  THEIR  NAME 

"The  Bad  Lands  are  so  called  because  they  are  bad  for  travelling — that  is,  if 
you're  in  anything  of  a  hurry!" 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  115 


Painted  by  Demit  Par  shall.     In  the  possession  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art 
THE  CATSKILLS  IN  A  MIST 

of  the  Hill  family,  using  the  word  "hill"  in  its  broadest 
sense.  If  you  have  looked  it  up  in  the  dictionary  you 
have  found  that  what  people  call  a  "hill"  depends  a  good 
deal  on  where  they  are.  The  Bad  Lands  are  really  hills; 
but  in  South  Dakota,  where  these  particular  bad  lands 
are,  they  also  have  what  they  call  the  Black  Hills,  which 
-are  really  mountains,  because  they  "mounted"  to  get 
where  they  are.1  They  wrinkled  up,  just  as  the  conti- 
nents themselves  did,  when  they  came  out  of  the  sea. 
Most  of  the  great  mountain  systems  of  the  world  were 
made  in  this  way,  but  table-lands  may  be  so  cut  up  by 
streams  in  course  of  time  that  they  look  like  mountains. 

1  Mr.  Pebble  did  not  mean  to  say,  I  am  sure,  that  the  word  "moun- 
tain" comes  from  "mount,"  used  in  the  sense  of  rising.  The  original 
of  the  word  mountain  comes  from  the  language  of  the  People  of  the 
Seven  Hills,  the  Romans,  and  means  a  great  mass  of  rock  or  earth  that 
sticks  up. — Translator. 


n6      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

The  Catskill  Mountains  are  of  this  type,  while  real  moun- 
tains may  be  so  worn  down  that  you  would  take  them 
for  plains.  You  see,  with  the  Hills  and  the  Mountains, 
as  with  other  royal  families,  it  isn't  the  importance  of  the 
individual  that  counts,  but  the  ancestry. 

Another  kind  of  real  mountain,  beside  the  folded-up 
kind,  is  the  mountain  that  is  made  where  a  rocky  plain  is 
split  up  into  great  stone  blocks  by  the  movements  of  the 
earth  crust,  as  it  settles  around  the  shrinking  centre.  In 
the  settling  and  crushing  together  of  the  rock  cover  around 
the  shrinking  ball  within,  some  of  the  blocks  drop  down, 
and  the  blocks  that  are  left  sticking  up  make  cliffs.  Moun- 
tain ranges  so  made  have  long,  gentle  slopes  on  the  side 
opposite  the  cliffs.  Then  there  are  volcanic  mountains. 
Fujiyama,  the  sacred  mountain  of  Japan,  is  one  of  these. 

Mountains  are  also  formed  where  the  molten  rock  on 
the  inside  of  the  earth  is  forced  up  under  layers  of  rock 
nearer  the  surface.  This  lifts  these  rock  layers  into  domes. 
In  the  course  of  time  the  rivers  and  the  weather  wear 
away  the  overlying  rocks,  leaving  the  hard  central  core 
standing  out.  Harder  layers  of  the  overlying  rock,  wear- 
ing down  less  rapidly  than  the  other  layers,  often  stand 
out  as  circular  ridges  with  valleys  in  between,  so  that  the 
central  core  looks  like  some  old  ring  master  at  a  circus. 
The  Bear  Paw  Mountains  and  the  Little  Snowies  of  Mon- 
tana are  mountains  of  this  type. 

WHERE   MOUNTAINS   GET   THEIR   PEAKS 

Most  mountain  peaks,  except  those  of  the  volcanoes, 
are  remnants  of  hard  rock  which  have  been  left  standing 
while  the  rivers  and  the  weather  cut  away  the  softer  rock 
around  them. 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  117 

In  regions  of  gently  rolling  country  even  small  hummocks 
are  sometimes  called  "mountains,"  while  out  West,  where 
scenery  grows  so  tall,  the  Black  Hills  seem  to  the  people 
only  stepping-stones  to  the  big  Rockies.  So  they  call 


IN  THE  HIMALAYAS  THEY  MIGHT  CALL  THESE  "HILLS" 

High  as  these  mountains  are — we  are  right  on  the  roof  of  the  Rockies — if  they 
were  in  the  Himalayas  they  might  be  called  "hills,"  because  there  the  scenery  grows 
so  much  taller.  What  does  the  sharpness  of  the  peaks  say  as  to  the  age  of  these 
mountains?  Compared  with  the  Appalachians,  for  example? 


them  "hills."  In  the  region  of  the  Himalaya  Mountains 
— mountains  that  don't  think  anything,  you  remember, 
of  climbing  up  16,000  to  30,000  feet  in  the  air — a  peak  of 
10,000  feet  is  often  called  a  "hill." 

II.    HILLS  THAT  WERE  MOVED  IN 

Nearly  every  region  has  hills,  because  every  region  has 
or  has  had  running  streams  and  the  streams  have  carved 


n8      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

out  the  hills.  But  there  are  kinds  of  hills  that  aren't 
home-made;  they  were  made  elsewhere  and  moved  in.  I 
believe  this  is  the  biggest  hill  secret  of  all,  speaking  of 
hills  proper  and  not  of  mountains. 

Almost  all  over  the  northern  part  of  North  America, 
as  well  as  much  of  Europe  and  Asia,  there  are  mounds, 


From  Norton's  "Elements  of  Geology."    By  permission  of  Ginn  and  Company 
KAME   SCENERY  IN   NEW  YORK   STATE 

heaps,  and  hills  of  various  shapes  and  sizes  made  up  of 
a  mixture  of  pebbles,  sand,  and  clay.  In  the  United 
States  these  heaps  make  a  big  line  of  hills,  like  a  procession 
of  ancient  Indian  chiefs,  with  bowed  heads  and  stooped 
shoulders,  plodding  back  to  the  land  of  their  fathers.  And, 
sure  enough,  there  they  go  from  down  East  clear  across 
country  to  the  far  West  and  then  up  North,  where,  as  we 
know,  these  hill-moving  giants,  the  glaciers,  came  from.1 
For,  beginning  with  Perth  Amboy,  N.  J.,  say,  you  will 

1  Did  you  suspect  the  giants  of  this  chapter  were  our  old  friends  the 
glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age,  when  I  first  began  talking  about  them  ? 


THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  119 

find  them  marching  on  through  Elmira,  N.  Y.,  skirting 
the  suburbs  of  Cincinnati,  winding  their  way  through 
Indiana  and  Iowa  up  through  Wisconsin  to  the  Dakotas 
and  Montana,  and  so  back  into  Canada. 

When  the  geologists  first  began  digging  into  these  hills 
they  not  only  found  them  as  full  of  pebbles  as  a  Christmas 
pudding  is  full  of  plums,  but  the  pebbles  were  of  all  kinds 
— sandstone,  limestone,  slate,  granite. 

JACK  FROST  DIDN'T  DO  IT! 

"These  different  pieces  of  stone  didn't  come  from  the 
breaking  up  by  frost  of  the  rock  beds  on  which  we  now 
find  them,"  said  Some  Wise  Man,  "for  then  they  would 
all  have  been  of  the  same  kind  of  rock." 

"And  besides,"  said  Some  Wise  Man  No.  2,  "they  would 
not  have  been  shaped  into  pebbles  with  the  edges  rounded 
off,  as  all  pebbles  are  by  the  waves  of  lakes  or  the  sea  or 
the  water  of  flowing  streams.  So  these  pebbles  must  have 
come  from  somewhere  else." 

"Yes,  and  a  long  way  off,"  remarked  Some  Wise  Man 
No.  3;  "for  look,  there  aren't  any  rock  beds  anywhere 
around  here  from  which  some  of  these  pebbles  could  have 
been  made." 

"True  enough,"  said  Wise  Man  No.  4,  "and  I  know 
what  brought  these  little  foreigners.  It  was  a  great  flood; 
for  water  moves  not  only  pebbles  and  clay,  but,  in  times 
of  flood,  good-sized  cobblestones." 

WHAT   IS   MEANT  BY   THE    "DRIFT"    THEORY 

So,  for  a  long  time,  it  was  believed  that  the  material  in 
these  hills  was  drifted  in  by  the  waters.  This  was  called 


120      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  "drift"  theory,  and,  although  it  is  now  known  that 
this  theory  was  not  the  true  one,  such  heaps  of  clay  and 
stones  are  still  called  "drift." 

But  the  learned  men  kept  on  digging  into  the  question 
and  into  the  hills,  and  finally  more  things  were  observed. 

"Did  you  notice  this?"  said  one.  "The  material  is  not 
separated  into  layers  and  divided  up  into  coarse,  finer, 
finest  as  the  sediment  of  pebbles,  sand,  and  mud  is  sep- 
arated and  divided  when  it  settles  along  shores.  These 
pebbles,  this  sand  and  clay,  are  all  mixed  up." 

"Look  at  this,  will  you?"  (Here  imagine  a  Learned 
Somebody  picking  up  a  pebble  with  a  scratched  face 
like  mine.)  "Water  never  scratched  anything  like  that. 
Here  are  a  lot  more  of  these  pebbles,  all  with  their  faces 
scratched." 

"And  just  see  how  all  these  scratched  pebbles  have  flat 
faces,"  cried  another  of  these  famous  grown-up  boys  in 
these  great  field  excursions.  "It  looks  to  me  as  if  they 
had  been  ground  against  something  hard — another  rock, 
say;  and  for  a  long  time." 

HOW  THE   QUESTION  WAS   FINALLY   SETTLED 

Well,  to  make  a  long  story  short,  they  found  that  the 
glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age,  those  great  bodies  of  flowing  ice, 
were  the  only  things  that  could  have  brought  all  this  mate- 
rial together  from  such  widely  separated  regions  (as  shown 
by  the  different  kinds  of  pebbles),  and  left  them  all  mixed 
up  as  they  were;  and  the  faces  of  many  pebbles  scratched 
and  flattened  where  they  had  been  ground  along. 

And  then,  to  put  the  question  entirely  beyond  dispute, 
they  find  that  th"fe  glaciers  are  carrying  down  pebbles  and 


THE   SECRETS   OF  THE  HILLS 


121 


HOW  THE  OLD   MEN  MOVED  THE  HILL  FURNITURE  ABOUT 

This  picture  of  a  glacier  in  Alaska  shows  you  just  how  the  Old  Men  of  the  Moun- 
tain moved  the  hills  about,  that  time.  As  indicated  by  the  white  lines — which,  of 
course,  were  added  to  the  picture  for  the  purpose — the  Alaska  glacier  melted  back, 
leaving  just  such  heaps  of  pebbles,  boulders,  and  soil  as  made  certain  types  of  hills. 
Then  from  10,10  to  1913  it  advanced  again,  thus  picking  up  the  very  hills  it  had 
laid  down  and  setting  them  farther  along,  just  as  the  glaciers  did  in  the  Ice  Age. 


stuff  in  just  this  way  to-day,  and  piling  it  up  in  hills  in  the 
valleys  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains.  Only  the  hills  of 
to-day  are  much  smaller,  because  the  glaciers  themselves 
are  so  small  compared  with  the  giants  of  the  past. 

HOW    THE    HILL    FURNITURE    WAS    MOVED    ABOUT 

During  the  Ice  Age,  when  glaciers  were  all  the  fashion, 
they  flowed  down,  and  then,  as  we  have  seen,  melted  back 


122   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

a  certain  distance;  then  they  flowed  down  again.  Some- 
times in  later  visits  they  flowed  further  than  before,  and 
in  so  doing,  you  see,  picked  up  some  of  the  very  hills  they 
had  previously  laid  down  and  set  them  along  somewhere 
else.  Sometimes  we  find  different  rows  of  hills,  one  right 
alongside  the  other.  This  shows  where  the  glacier  melted 
away  toward  the  mountains,  paused,  then  melted  again 
and  so  on,  each  time  leaving  a  group  of  hills  and  not  com- 
ing back  there  and  disturbing  them  any  more. 

Such  hills  as  we  have  been  speaking  of  njay  be  steep  or 
gentle,  and  from  a  few  feet  to  more  than  1,000  feet  high, 
although  they  are  seldom  as  high  as  1,000  feet. 

And  there  are  other  kinds  of  hills  made  by  the  glaciers. 
One  of  the  most  curious  of  these  remind  you  of  the  serpent 
mounds  left  by  the  mound  builders  in  Ohio.  These  hills 
are  the  deposits  left  by  the  streams,  the  veins  inside  the 
glacier's  great  body.  The  soil  in  them  is  also  apt  to  be  in 
layers  like  the  deposits  of  other  rivers.  These  hills  wind 
along  like  serpents,  because  they  reproduce  the  bends  in 
the  streams  inside  the  glacier.  Such  hills  are  called  "esk- 
ers."  They  are  seldom  more  than  a  few  rods  wide  and  10 
feet  or  so  in  height.  They  run  for  10,  20,  40,  50,  and 
sometimes  100  miles. 

Around  Boston,  and  all  along  Cape  Cod  and  in  parts 
of  New  York  and  Wisconsin,  you  will  see  other  hills  called 
"drumlins";  and  you  will  see  plenty  of  them,  too.  It  is 
estimated  that  there  are  6,000  in  western  New  York  and 
5,000  in  southern  Wisconsin,  and  they  are  all  around  Bos- 
ton. Bunker  Hill  is  a  drumlin.  You  wouldn't  have  to 
tell  an  Irish  boy  what  "drumlin"  means,  as  they  have 
these  hills  in  Ireland,  too,  and  from  Ireland  .came  the 
name.  The  word  means  "little  hill." 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  123 

But  while  Mr.  Glacier  made  the  drumlins  of  the  stuff 
he  brought  with  him,  he  enjoyed  himself  (at  least  let 
us  hope  so)  tobogganing  on  hills  he  found  ready  made. 
These  hills  are  real  mountains;  usually  the  granite  heart 
of  the  mountain,  because  only  a  very  strong  rock  could 
stand  having  one  of  these  playful  giants  riding  over  him 
and  live  to  tell  the  tale.  Such  glacier  "slides"  are  referred 
to  as  "domes"  or  "round  tops"  or  "bald  mountains." 

Mr.  Agassiz,  the  great  scientist  who  spent  so  many 
years  studying  the  motion  of  glaciers,  could  tell  from  the 
height  of  one  of  these  bald  and  rounded  hills  how  high  the 
glacier  was  that  rode  over  it.  For  instance,  the  glaciers 
rode  over  what  is  known  as  Blue  Mountain  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, which  is  1,500  feet  high.  "Then,"  Mr.  Agassiz 
would  have  said,  "the  glaciers  that  did  that  must  have 
been  at  least  2,000  feet  thick;  for  a  glacier  can  only  flow 
over  a  rocky  mass  when  it  is  half  as  tall  again  as  the  rock." 

You  see  it  is  the  mass  of  it,  the  pressure  of  its  own  weight, 
that  boosts  the  glacier  up  the  slide.  It  seems  almost  like 
lifting  oneself  by  one's  boot-straps,  doesn't  it? 

III.    THE  ANTS  AND  THE  VOLCANOES 

Beside  all  the  hills  we  have  mentioned  there  are  several 
others,  well  worth  looking  into;  ant-hills,  for  example,  not 
only  because  ants  are  so  interesting  in  themselves  but 
because  the  ants  helped  to  answer  what  for  a  long  time 
was  one  of  the  puzzles  of  science,  "How  are  volcanoes 
made?" 

When  your  mother's  mother  went  to  school — or  it  may 
have  been  back  in  your  mother's  mother's  mother's  time 


124        STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


From  a  photograph.    Copyright  by  W.  P.  Romans 

SACRED   FUJIYAMA 

On  the  left  is  the  famous  Fujiyama,  the  sacred  mountain  of  Japan,  and  on  the  right 
thousand  miles  apart,  the  two  volcanoes  look  as  if  they  had  been  cast  in  the 

— a  little  girl,  on  being  asked  in  the  geography  class, 
"What  is  a  volcano?"  was  expected  to  say  something  like 
this: 

"Please,  teacher,  it's  a  mountain  with  a  hole  in  it." 

THE  WISE  MEN  AND  THE  ANT  CRATERS 

It  does  look  it,  doesn't  it?  But,  what  is  still  more 
striking,  it  isn't  a  mountain  with  a  hole  in  it  at  all,  if  you 
mean,  as  the  little  girl  in  the  geography  class  meant,  that 
it  was  once  an  ordinary  mountain  and  then  had  a  hole 
put  through  it.  For  a  long  time  it  was  thought  that  vol- 
canoes were  simply  mountains  through  which  fire  and  lava 
from  the  interior  had  forced  its  way.  Finally,  however, 


THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  12  ? 


AND  ITS  COUNTERPART  THREE  THOUSAND   MILES  AWAY 

Mount  Rainier  in  the  State  of  Washington.     Although  they  are  more  than   four 
same  mould,  owing  to  the  uniform  system  by  which  volcanoes  are  built  up. 

some  scientist  thought  perhaps  of  his  Proverbs  6:6.  In 
any  event  wise  as  he  must  have  been — how  else  could  he 
have  been  a  scientist  ?— he  went  to  the  ant,  learned  her 
ways  and  became  wiser.  It  was  by  noticing  how  the  ants 
build  their  little  craters  with  the  sand  and  clay  they  carry 
from  their  underground  homes  that  men  got  the  idea  that 
volcanoes  may  be  built  up  in  much  the  same  way.  So 
they  set  to  observing  Mr.  Volcano's  habits  more  closely, 
and  sure  enough,  the  ant  had  told  the  answer !  The  stones, 
lava,  cinders,  and  the  stone  dust  called  "volcanic  ash" 
are  shot  out  by  the  explosion,  and  coming  down  in  showers 
pile  around  the  opening,  as  the  ant  piles  the  pellets  around 
the  entrance  to  her  nest.  As  the  explosions  keep  on  the 


126      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

crater  is  piled  higher  and  higher,  and  the  stones,  cinders, 
and  things,  rolling  down  the  sides,  spread  the  pile  out  at 
the  bottom,  much  as  the  ant  drops  pellets  over  the  edge 
of  her  growing  pile,  and  so  both  the  cone-like  ant-hill  and 
the  big  volcanic  cone  are  built  up. 

WHY  THE  VOLCANO  DOES  NOT  SMOKE 

But  here  is  something  about  volcanoes  that  will  sur- 
prise most  people.  They  throw  mud,  they  throw  stones, 
but  they  don't  smoke.  What  we  call  smoke  is  the  steam 
that  makes — or  at  least  helps  make — the  explosion.  It 
often  has  the  color  of  brown  smoke  because  of  the  rock 
which  has  been  blown  into  dust.  Neither  do  volcanoes 
make  " ashes."  What  is  called  "ash"  is  this  rock  powder, 
made  when  the  rocks  are  blown  into  pieces  by  the  sudden 
expansion  of  the  water  in  them  into  steam. 

WHY  VOLCANOES   SEEM   TO   FLAME 

Neither  do  volcanoes  flame,  although  they  are  supposed 
to.  Only  rarely  does  flame  issue  from  a  volcano,  and  then 
only  to  a  moderate  extent,  due  to  the  burning  of  the 
hydrogen  gas.  What  seem  to  be  huge  flames  are  the  lights 
from  the  molten  lava  in  the  crater  shining  back  on  the 
steam  clouds  above;  and  these  apparent  flames  rise  and 
fall  and  vary  in  brightness  because  of  the  rise  and  fall  of 
the  lava. 

But  the  greatest  of  volcanic  eruptions — that  is,  the  well- 
ing up  of  melted  rock  from  within  the  earth — have  not 
built  cones.  The  lava  spread  out  into  vast  plains  in  India 
and  Abyssinia  and  in  our  northwestern  coast  States. 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS 


127 


Great  cracks  in  the  earth  cross  one  another.  It  is  at  the 
crossroads  that  the  volcanoes  are  apt  to  form,  while  out 
of  the  cracks  leading  up  to  these  crossroads  the  lava  spreads 


"BUT  VOLCANOES  DO  NOT  SMOKE!" 

This  is  an  eruption  of  Vesuvius.  You  would  think  it  was  throwing  out  smoke 
like  a  gigantic  locomotive,  wouldn't  you,  if  you  hadn't  read  the  text?  The  darker 
masses,  which  look  so  much  like  mingled  smoke  and  steam,  are  shadows.  It  is 
probably  eight  to  ten  miles  high — that  cloud. 


in  sheets.     Mount  Shasta  began  at  one  of  these  traffic 
centres.     It  is  a  big  brother  of  the  landscape  which  it 
overlooks. 
Lava,  before  it  cools  and  for  some  centuries  afterward, 


128      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

is  the  last  thing  you  would  think  of  farming  on,  perhaps, 
but  leave  it  to  the  little  chemists  of  the  water  and  the  air 
and  it 'will  decay  into  the  richest  land  you  ever  saw.  That 
is  why  they  raise  the  finest  wheat  and  the  best  fruit  in  the 
world  right  in  the  parts  of  Washington  and  Oregon  that 
were  once  covered  by  the  lava  flood. 

Not  only  do  volcanoes  help  to  supply  us  with  food  by 
making  rich  soil  of  the  eruptions  of  the  past,  but  all  life 
might  disappear  from  the  earth  if  they  didn't  go  on  ex- 
ploding. 

Plants  must  have  carbon  and  they  get  it  from  the  air, 


HOW  VOLCANOES  BLOW  BUBBLES 

The  surface  of  lava  is  apt  to  bubble  like  hot  mush;  and  for  a  similar  reason,  the 
expansion  of  the  gases  within  it.  (In  the  case  of  the  mush  it  is  the  mixture  of 
gases  we  call  "air.")  When  such  lava  cools  you  have  sponge-like  masses  such  as 
this. 


THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  129 


From  a  photograph  by  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History 

ROCKS  AND   BOMBS  THROWN   BY   MOUNT  PELEE 

Look  at  these  giant  rocks  thrown  out  by  Mount  Pelee  in  1902.  Compare  them 
with  the  man  and  you  will  realize  how  big  they  are.  The  rounded  rocks  in  the 
foreground  are  volcanic  "bombs" — masses  of  lava  discharged  by  successive  out- 
bursts of  volcanic  gases  and  given  their  shape  by  being  whirled  through  the  air 


but  the  amount  of  it  in  proportion  to  their  needs  is  never 
large.  Moreover,  every  bit  of  coal  that  is  formed — and 
coal  is  being  made  to-day  just  as  it  was  in  the  coal  ages, 
although  not  in  such  quantities — takes  carbon  from  the 
air  and  locks  it  up.  Every  bit  of  limestone  deposited  on 
the  floor  of  the  sea  locks  up  more  carbon.  But,  fortu- 
nately, immense  quantities  of  carbon  are  given  back  to 
the  air  through  the  gases  thrown  out  by  volcanoes,  thus 
offsetting  these  losses. 


130      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

WHEN  IS  A  VOLCANO  REALLY  DEAD? 

When  is  a  volcano  dead?  You  never  can  tell.  A  vol- 
cano goes  off  when  it  wants  to,  quite  regardless  of  the  fact 
that  it  has  had  the  reputation  for  a  thousand  years  of  being 


WHEN  IS  A  VOLCANO  DEAD? 

This  is  Mount  Rainier  with  its  shroud  of  snow,  reflected  in  Mirror  Lake.  To 
all  appearances  it  is  as  dead  as  dead  can  be;  but  until  after  a  volcano  goes  off  you 
never  can  be  entirely  sure  whether  it  is  dead  or  not;  and  then,  of  course,  you  know 
it  isn't ! 

dead  And  the  worst  of  it  is  volcanoes  are  like  guns — 
only  more  so.  A  gun  doesn't  shoot  any  harder  because  it 
wasn't  supposed  to  be  loaded;  but  the  volcano,  if  it  breaks 
out  unexpectedly,  is  violent  in  proportion  to  the  length  of 
time  it  has  been  apparently,  dead.  This  is  the  reason. 
The  original  vent  becomes  plugged  up  with  the  cooled 
lava.  This  plug  being  harder  than  the  rest  of  the  moun- 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE   HILLS  131 

tain,  the  next  outbreak  is  forced  to  take  a  new  course, 
and  the  longer  the  forces  of  explosion  are  held  back  the 
greater  the  accumulation  of  energy  and  the  more  violent 
the  discharge. 

But  why  do  volcanoes  go  off  at  all?  Why  can't  they  be 
quiet  and  well-behaved  like  other  mountains?  Nobody 
knows  for  sure.  On  one  thing  all  scientific  men  seem  to 
be  now  agreed;  namely,  that  while  the  rocks  inside  the 
earth  are  hot  enough  to  melt  they  are  hard  as  steel,  owing 
to  the  tremendous  pressure  of  the  rocks  above  them,  and 
one  theory  about  volcanic  eruptions  is  that  they  are  caused 
by  the  release  of  the  pressure  on  this  rock  in  one  place  and 
a  pressing  down  in  another,  as  the  earth's  crust  settles  and 
crumples  around  the  centre.  Some  of  this  rock — that  on 
which  the  pressure  is  released — melts  and  rises  under  the 
folds  of  rising  rock,  and  so  makes  the  granite  hearts  of  the 
greater  mountains.  Some  of  it  wells  up  through  the  cracks 
in  the  rock  and  spreads  in  lava  fields,  while  some  of  it 
gushes  up  and  explodes  at  the  points  where  cracks  cross 
and  so  make  volcanoes. 

This  is  one  theory,  but  there  are  others.  The  latest  is 
so  big  that  we  will  have  to  take  it  into  the  mind  in  sections. 

THE   LATEST   THEORY   OF  ERUPTIONS 

1.  Imagine  the  interior  of  the  earth  divided  into  three 
zones.     The  central  zone,  of  course,  is  the  hottest.     Be- 
tween this  central  zone  and  the  zone  reaching  down  forty 
miles  or  so  from  the  surface  is  a  middle  zone.     (Think  of  a 
doughnut  ball  inside  a  doughnut  ring,  with  space  between 
the  ball  and  ring.     That  will  give  you  the  idea.) 

2.  From  what  is  known  of  the  laws  of  heat  it  is  assumed 


132      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


1 


THE  MYSTERIOUS  SHAFT  OF  MOUNT  PELEE 

In  1902,  after  the  first  explosion,  Mount  Petee  continued  its  eruptions  for  several 
months,  and  in  the  late  stages  there  slowly  rose,  through  the  crater,  this  strange 
shaft  of  red-hot  lava,  like  a  great  iron  beam  forged  by  giant  hammers  in  Vulcan's 
famous  blacksmith-shop.  As  it  rose  it  crumbled  and  finally  fell  to.  pieces.  It  was 
forced  up  by  the  gases  beneath  and  shaped  by  the  crater  through  which  it  came; 
but  can  you  conceive  of  anything  more  weird  and  awesome? 

that  the  flow  of  heat  from  the  central  to  the  middle  zone 
is  greater  than  the  loss  of  heat  from  the  central  to  the 
outer  zone.  Thus  the  heat  income  of  the  middle  zone 
would  constantly  exceed  its  outlay,  and  so  it  would  get 
hotter  and  hotter. 

3.  This  middle  zone  is  made  up  of  different  kinds  of 
rock  that  require  different  degrees  of  heat  to  melt  them. 


THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  133 

So  some  parts  of  this  zone  would  melt  and  form  pockets  of 
liquid  rock,  while  other  parts  were  still  unmelted. 

4.  These  masses  of  liquid  rock  would  also  tend  to  melt 
their  own  way  upward,  especially  when  given  a  lift  by 
gases;  for  gases  would  be  given  off,  also,  in  this  heating 
arid  melting  process,  and  tend  to  work  their  way  toward 
the  surface,  carrying  with  them  the  liquid  rock. 

5.  Now  the  greater  the  pressure  under  which  a  thing  is 
kept  the  more  difficult  it  becomes  for  it  to  flow;  the  less 
the  pressure  the  more  easily  it  flows  and  the  longer  it 
remains  in  the  fluid  state.     So  as  it  rose  fluid  rock  would 
require  less  heat  to  keep  it  fluid  Und  would  have  more  heat 
left  over  for  melting  its  way  up.     Then,  being  joined  by 
other  fluid  travellers,  the  entire  mass  would  finally  come 
to  a  crack  in  the  earth.     Finally,  you  see,  it  would  be 
only  a  matter  of  five  miles  or  so  of  comparatively  clear 
track  up  to  the  land  of  the  fresh  air  and  the  blue  sky  where 
the  rest  of  us  live  and  where  the  vulcanologists  (the  men 
who  make  a  special  study  of  volcanoes)  would  be  waiting 
to  give  it  welcome  ! 

THE   VOLCANOES  AND   THE   SEA 

If  you  will  locate  with  red  ink  the  volcanoes  on  the 
world  map  you  will  notice  that  volcanoes,  like  mountains, 
seem  fond  of  the  sea.  Moreover,  while  a  large  proportion 
of  mountain  chains  are  near  sea  water,  and  some  even  dip 
their  feet  into  it,  volcanoes  bob  up  right  in  the  seas  them- 
selves. Not  only  do  the  land  volcanoes  make  a  great  cir- 
cle of  fire  22,000  miles  long  around  the  rim  of  the  Pacific, 
but  within  this  immense  amphitheatre  are  the  islands  of 
our  story  books  "scattered  in  pleiads"  over  the  ocean. 


134    STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


•ft—  Promt  or  Keceot  Action  (Crow  line!  ihow  known. Activity) 

.  ^.Generally  Ancient (CrWMl  show  where  Activity  continues  t,Q  tie,  Present) 
•      A°tlre  Volcanoes  In  Oceanic  Depressions  I 

0      Extinct         | 


ON  THE  FIRING-LINES  OF  THE  VOLCANOES 

These  islands  are  simply  the  tops  of  sea  volcanoes.  Of 
all  the  active  volcanoes,  the  great  majority  are  on  islands 
or  along  the  borders  of  continents. 

THE  MOUNTAINS   AND   THE   SEA 

Last  of  all  in  this  story  of  the  secrets  of  the  hills,  let  us 
speak  of  the  big  brothers  of  the  family — the  mountains. 

You  remember  in  the  story  of  how  the  continents  came 
up  out  of  the  sea  about  wise  old  Xenophanes  of  Colophon, 
who  figured  out  that  the  mountains  must  at  one  time  have 
been  under  the  sea  and  why  he  thought  so,  don't  you? 
(page  13).  Now  get  your  geography  and  come  here  a  mo- 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS 


135 


ment;  I  want  to  show  you  something  else.  Turn  to  the 
map  of  North  America.  Where  are  the  great  mountain 
chains?  Nearly  all  along  the  borders  of  the  sea.  Now 
look  at  the  map  of  South  America,  and  where  are  the 


From  Norton's  "Elements  of  Geology."    By  permission  of 
Ginn  and  Company 

A  BABY  MOUNTAIN  THAT  STOPPED  TO  REST 

A  mountain,  as  you  can  readily  imagine,  isn't  made  in  a  day.  Here  is  a  little 
mountain  near  Hancock,  Virginia,  that  started  up  ages  ago  and  then  stopped  to 
rest;  one  of  the  ripples  in  which  the  great  Appalachian  waves  died  away.  This 
baby  mountain  has  no  granite  mass  in  its  centre,  as  big  mountains  have,  because 
the  wrinkling  didn't  reach  down  far  enough  into  the  earth  to  release  the  pressure 
on  the  molten  rock. 


mountains?  Along  the  borders  of  the  sea.  Then  take 
Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  Australia,  and  you  see  the  same 
thing.  Usually  the  main  mountain  chains  are  along  the 
sea  border  or  they  stand  near  the  borders  of  what  was 
once  a  sea;  as  in  case  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

Why  should  mountains  show  such  a  fancy  for  salt  water  ? 
It  seems  strange,  doesn't  it?  I  know  why  it  is  because  I 
helped  make  a  mountain  myself  once — up  on  the  Canada 
Coast  it  was — and  I  learned  a  good  deal  of  the  mountains 
and  their  ways.  I  will  tell  you  about  the  mountains  and 


136   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  sea  a  little  later;  after  I  have  told  you  some  other 
things.  First  of  all,  this  is  how  the  Granite  family  helped 
make  mountains.  As  the  great  stone  sides  of  the  moun- 
tain rise  the  enormous  pressure  on  the  melted  rock  farther 


MOUNTAINS  MADE  TO  ORDER 

Of  course  nobody  ever  watched  a  mountain  crumpling  up  in  the  way  mountains 
are  believed  to  crumple  up,  the  process  is  so  slow.  Yet,  to  try  out  the  theory, 
geologists  in  the  universities  make  layers  of  different  material,  corresponding  to 
the  strata  of  different  kinds  of  stone,  and  then  subject  this  composition  to  pressure 
at  both  ends,  as  the  earth  crust  is  supposed  to  be  pressed  in  the  crumpling  process. 
The  result  is  that  these  artificial  strata  take  similar  forms  to  those  we  see  in  moun- 
tain rock.  And  that's  the  answer ! 

Notice  the  similarity  of  the  rock  wrinkles  in  the  baby  mountain  in  Virginia  and 
these  imitation  mountains  of  the  laboratory. 


down  in  the  earth  is  released,  and  is  forced  up  under  the 
mountain  as  it  rises.  Then,  cooling,  it  crystallizes  into 
granite,  as  explained  on  page  131. 

WHY  MOUNTAINS  RUN  NORTH  AND   SOUTH 

Look  at  your  relief  map  once  more.  Which  way  do  the 
mountains  run  in  North  America?  In  South  America? 
In  Africa?  They  all  run  in  a  general  north  and  south 
direction,  don't  they?  Do  you  see  why?  The  fact  that 
they  were  made  along  the  coasts  of  the  oceans  would  make 
them  run  north  and  south,  too,  wouldn't  it?  The  same 
thing  explains  why  the  Alps  do  not  run  north  and  south. 
They  were  made  by  the  sinking  of  a  sea  that  runs  east 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  137 

and  west,  and  so  they  started  out  to  run  east  and  west, 
too;  then  they  got  a  wrench,  the  particulars  of  which  we 
need  not  go  into  here,  and  were  much  mixed  up,  as  we 
find  them  to-day. 

WHAT  HAPPENED   WHEN   THE   EARTH   SLOWED   UP 

But  there  is  another  thing  that  may  have  helped  to 
make  many  great  mountains  run  north  and  south.  Bed- 
time and  sunrise  used  to  come  a  good  deal  oftener  than 
they  do  now,  for  then  the  earth  turned  faster  on  its  axis. 
It  turned  fastest  of  all  at  the  equator,  just  as  it  does  to- 
day. So  the  lands  in  the  equatorial  belt  were  pulled  up 
and  the  belt  enlarged.  Then,  as  the  speed  of  the  globe 
slackened,  the  enlarged  belt  began  to  wrinkle  because 
there  was  not  the  same  amount  of  centrifugal  or  "  fly- 
away- from- the-centre "  force  to  make  it  stand  out.  So 
wrinkles  came  at  right  angles  to  the  belt,  just  as  do  the 
waist  gathers  in  a  dress. 

And  now  about  the  mystery  of  the  mountains  and  the 
sea.  When  we  visit  the  rock  mills  of  the  sea  along  in 
October1  we  shall  notice,  among  other  things,  that  the 
rock  is  made  along  the  sea  border,  and  that  the  coarsest 
sediment  settles  nearest  the  land.  As  a  result  this  part 
of  the  deposit  is  built  up  faster  than  that  farther  off  shore, 
and  as  it  gets  heavier  and  heavier  it  sinks.  The  deposits 
farther  away  from  the  shore  sink,  also,  but  more  slowly 
because  these  deposits  are  not  piled  up  so  fast.  Now,  if 
you  come  down  on  one  end  of  a  seesaw  what  happens  to 
the  other  end?  It  goes  up,  doesn't  it?  The  effect  of  this 
sinking  of  the  rocks  of  the  sea  upon  the  rocks  of  the  adjoin- 

1  Chapter  X,  "The  Autumn  Winds  and  the  Rock  Mills  of  the  Sea." 


138      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

ing  land  is  something  like  that.  The  rocks  that  make  the 
continents  extend  out  under  the  sea,  and  the  weight  of  the 
newly  laid  stone  on  the  sea  margin  end  not  only  tips  the 
rock  beds  up,  but,  sinking  in  toward  the  continental  mass, 
wrinkles  it  up,  as  the  pages  of  this  book  will  wrinkle  if 
you  push  them  from  the  front  edge.  So  you  get  your 
mountains  along  the  sea  border.  And  they  are  in  parallel 
ranges,  because  the  land  is  crumpled  up  into  several  folds, 
like  a  tablecloth  pushed  from  one  side. 

"But,"  you  say,  "how  about  the  Rocky  Mountains? 
And  the  Carpathian  Mountains  in  Europe,  not  to  mention 
several  others?  They  are  not  on  the  borders  of  the  sea." 

WHY   SOME   MOUNTAINS   ARE   FAR   FROM   THE    SEA 

That's  no  sign  they  weren't  near  a  sea  border  at  some 
time.  Let  me  just  ask  you.  Suppose  you  found  that  most 
of  the  great  mountain  chains  are  on  the  borders  of  seas, 
and  suppose  you  had  figured  out  the  reasons  I  have  just 
been  giving,  then  what  would  you  do  if  you  found  a  few 
mountains  far  back  from  the  sea?  You  would  probably 
try  to  find  how  they  got  moved  back,  wouldn't  you? 
That's  just  what  other  men  of  science  did.  A  study  of  the 
rocks  of  the  mountains  themselves  and  other  things  bear- 
ing on  the  question  goes  to  show  that  since  the  mountains 
were  made  the  sea  might  have  retired  from  regions  where 
it  had  previously  advanced,  as  it  did  in  the  case  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  or  the  land  may  have  risen  between 
these  mountains  and  the  sea.  Moreover,  the  down  wash 
from  the  mountains  themselves  sometimes  builds  wide 
lands,  which,  as  they  extend  and  shut  back  the  sea,  leave 
the  mountains  farther  and  farther  away.  Much  of  the 


THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS 


139 


land  extending  east  from  the  base  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
was  made  in  this  way.  The  Mississippi  Valley  was  for 
ages,  you  know  (page  10)  the  Mediterranean  Sea  of  North 
America,  lying  in  the  downward  fold  of  our  continent 
between  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Appalachians. 

WHY   SEA   WAVES  RISE  TO  GREET  THE  MOUNTAINS 

One  of  the  strangest,  most  poetic  phases  of  the  relation 
between  the  great  blue  mountains  and  the  great  blue  sea 
is  that  waves,  as  they  approach  the  shores  of  continents 
bordered  by  mountain  ranges,  rise  higher  and  higher; 
and  the  higher  the  mountains,  the  higher  rise  the  waves. 
These  waves  are  not  driven  by  wind  or  tide  but  seem  drawn 
forward  by  some  strange  power.  This  power,  however,  is 
no  stranger  than  the  one  that  makes  us  fall  and  bump  our 
noses  when  we  stub  our  toes — the  power  of  gravitation, 
according  to  which  all  masses  attract  each  other.  It  is  the 
mass  in  the  mountains  that  exerts  a  pull  on  the  waves; 
and  the  greater  the  mountains  the  greater  the  pull,  of 


',  the  painting  by  David  James 


THE  WAVE 


140      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

course.  In  the  Indian  Ocean,  for  example,  around  the 
head  of  the  Arabian  Sea,  the  waves  rise  far  above  sea 
level,  largely  because  there  is  beyond  them,  on  the  land, 
one  of  the  greatest  mountain  masses  in  the  world. 

Wouldn't  it  give  you  a  queer  feeling  if  you  were,  say,  a 
sailor,  and  for  the  first  time  saw  waves  act  like  that? 
Uncanny,  almost,  isn't  it? 

But  do  the  mountains  remember  their  old  parent  of  the 
white  flowing  rocks  and  beard,  Father  Neptune?  They 
act  as  if  they  did;  particularly  in  the  way  in  which  they 
come  to  imitate,  in  time,  the  shape  of  the  waves  of  the  sea. 

Ruskin,1  speaking  to  artists  about  drawing  mountains, 
says: 

"Good  and  intelligent  mountain  drawing  recognizes  a 
great  harmony  among  the  summits  and  their  tendency  to 
throw  themselves  into  waves,  closely  resembling  those  of 
the  sea  itself;  sometimes  in  free  tossing  toward  the  sky, 
but  more  frequently  in  the  form  of  breakers,  concave  and 
steep  on  one  side,  convex  and  less  steep  on  the  other." 

When  you  stand  some  day  on  one  of  the  high  peaks  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  look  out  over  the  great  fields  of 
upheaved  stone,  you  will  notice  how  closely  the  parallel 
ridges  resemble  ranks  of  waves  making  toward  a  shore. 
Like  sea  waves  also,  the  vast  backs  of  these  waves  of  stone 
are  long  and  sloping,  while  their  fronts  are  comparatively 
short  and  much  steeper.  Another  thing  that  makes  you 
feel  as  if  you  were  looking  out  upon  a  sea  whose  waves  had 
been  changed  to  stone  is  the  fact  that  these  stone  waves 
are  not  only  green  but  have  white  caps;  for  in  the  valleys, 
and  far  up  the  sides  of  the  mountains,  are  the  forests  with 
1  "Modern  Painters,"  Chapter  IV. 


THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  141 

the  perennial  green  of  their  pines,  and  on  the  peaks  the 
eternal  snows. 

Not  only  is  the  mounting  and  forward  drive  of  waves 
repeated  in  mountain  forms,  but  also  the  whirlpools  among 


"AND  EVERY  TOSSING  OF  THEIR  BOUNDLESS  CRESTS" 

the  rocks  when  sea  waves  reach  the  shore.  Says  the 
famous  French  geographer,  Reclus1: 

''The  centre  of  the  Pyrenees  resembles  a  great  whirlpool 
around  which  the  mountains  rise  like  enormous  waves." 

Finally  we  might  imagine  that  the  mountains,  like  the 
mountain  streams,  hear  the  call  of  the  sea  and  are  stirred 
by  it.  For,  again  to  quote  from  Ruskin's  wonderful  chap- 
ter on  the  nature  of  the  thing  we  call  a  mountain: 

"Behold  as  we  look  farther  into  it,  it  is  all  touched  and 
troubled.  The  rock  trembles  through  its  every  fibre,  like 
the  chords  of  an  ^olian  harp — like  the  stillest  air  of  spring 
with  the  echoes  of  a  child's  voice.  Into  the  heart  of  all 

141  The  Earth." 


142   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


From  Norton's  -Elements  of  Geology"     By  permission  of  Ginn  and  Company 

"THAT  STRANGE  QUIVERING  OF  THEIR   SUBSTANCE" 

This  picture  shows  mountain-peaks  carved  in  folded  strata  in  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains in  Montana.     How  well  it  illustrates  Ruskin's  grand  lines. 


those  great  mountains  and  through  every  tossing  of  their 
boundless  crests  and  deep  beneath  all  their  unfathomable 
denies,  flows  that  strange  quivering  of  their  substance. 

"'I  beheld  the  mountains  and  lo  they  trembled;  and  all 
the  hills  moved  lightly.'" 


HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

Of  course  you  saw  that  the  Greeks  meant  the  story  of  Phaeton 
to  account,  among  other  things,  for  the  origin  of  deserts,  but  what 
is  there  in  it  that  would  lead  one  to  believe  the  Greeks  knew  there 
were  such  things  as  volcanoes  ?  Read  what  the  encyclopedia  says 
about  volcanoes  and  Vulcan  and  the  physical  geography  of  Greece 
and  the  Greek  islands. 

Where  is  Mount  Stromboli  and  why  is  it  called  "The  Lighthouse 
of  the  Mediterranean"? 


THE   SECRETS  OF  THE  HILLS  143 

On  which  of  our  coasts  do  we  have  young  and  growing  moun- 
tains, and  on  which  old  mountains  that  are  much  worn  down? 

Did  you  ever  notice,  on  your  map  of  Europe,  how  the  curve  of 
the  Carpathian  Mountains  follows  the  curve  of  the  shore  of  the 
beautiful  Adriatic  Sea  so  far  away  ? 1  What  does  that  remind  you 
of  in  the  story  of  the  relation  between  the  mountains  and  the  sea  ? 

"Yes,"  you  say,  "but  if  mountains  are  formed  on  the  borders 
of  the  sea  why  are  the  Carpathians  so  far  from  the  Adriatic;  and 
the  Alps  so  far  from  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Rocky  Mountains 
of  America  and  the  Altai  mountains  of  Asia  so  far  away  from  any 
sea  at  all?" 

Professor  Heilprin2  knew  you  would  say  that;  at  least  I  suppose 
he  did,  for  he  has  explained  all  this  in  his  little  book,  written  espe- 
cially for  young  people,  "The  Earth  and  Its  Story."  After  you 
have  read  this  part  of  the  story  write  it  out  in  your  own  words 
and  then  copy  it  into  your  notebook.  You  might  call  your  own 
story,  "How  Mountains  are  Moved  Back  from  the  Sea." 

What  mountains  do  the  waves  of  the  Indian  Ocean  rise  to  salute  ? 
How  do  they  compare  in  size  with  other  mountains  that  you 
know  of? 

How  does  the  carbon  in  the  gases  of  volcanoes  get  into  the 
plants? 

What  does  it  say  in  Proverbs  6:  6  that  might  remind  one  of  the 
fact  that  the  ants  helped  solve  the  puzzle  as  to  how  volcanoes  are 
made? 

As  to  the  hills  that  were  moved  in,  a  Wisconsin  writer,  who  has, 
among  other  things,  written  delightfully  of  his  companionship 
with  the  rocks  and  hills  of  his  State3  tells  about  sinking  a  well 
132  feet  deep  on  his  farm,  and  going  through  this  imported  scenery 
all  the  way. 

"Somewhere  down  there,"  he  says,  "if  I  had  kept  on  going  I 
should  have  struck  the  original  Wisconsin." 

And  why  not  be  an  author  yourself?  Start  a  little  book  of 
science  of  your  own  and  learn  to  make  notes  on  interesting  things 
you  have  been  reading  about.  For  instance,  put  in  it  now  some 
of  the  different  things  we  have  learned  about  the  wonder-workers 

1  How  far  away  is  it?     The  scale  of  miles  on  your  map  will  tell. 

2  Professor  of  Geology  in  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences,  Phila- 
delphia. 

3  Charles  D  Stewart,  "Essays  on  the  Spot." 


144      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

of  the  Ice  Age,  up  to  and  including  this  chapter.  Call  what  you 
write  "The  Story  of  the  Old  Men  of  the  Mountain."  At  the  end 
of  the  part  you  write  now  you  can  put  "To  be  continued,"  just  as 
they  do  in  a  story  paper;  for  we  are  not  through  with  the  work  of 
the  old  men,  as  you  will  see. 

How  did  Rome  get  its  seven  hills?  (You  know  it  was  called 
The  City  of  the  Seven  Hills.) 

The  Bible  quotation  in  Ruskin  about  the  trembling  of  the  moun- 
tains is  from  Jeremiah  4:  24.  How  grand  it  sounds,  doesn't  it? 
Like  the  music  of  a  pipe  organ.  The  ^ible  has  many  references 
to  "hills"  and  mountains.  Here  are  some  of  the  most  striking: 
Psalms  114:4;  Exodus  20:18;  Deut.  5:23;  Rev.  8:8;  Micah  1:4; 
Isaiah  54:10. 

Where  are  the  most  famous  of  the  Bad  Lands  of  our  Western 
States?  Those  of  South  Dakota  are  perhaps  the  strangest. 
Among  other  strange  things  is  the  fact  that  some  of  the  hills  were 
set  on  fire  by  rain — goodness  knows  how  long  ago — and  these  hills 
are  like  gigantic  stoves  for  the  cattle,  who  never  fail  to  collect 
around  them  on  bleak  days. 

In  the  article  on  South  Dakota  in  the  Britannica  you'll  learn  all 
about  how  the  rain  started  the  fire.  Then  perhaps  you  will  want 
to  look  up  "spontaneous  combustion"  and  "iron  pyrites." 

Aren't  those  ancient  monsters  whose  bones  they  find  in  the  hills 
comical  looking  creatures — now  that  we  are  several  million  years 
safely  away  from  them?  The  comic  artists  (of  pen  and  pencil)  are 
always  having  fun  with  them.  Arthur  Guiterman,  for  instance, 
in  picturing  what  spring  must  have  been  like  in  those  old  days: 

"Go-dum,  bally  hoosh!"  is  the  note  of  the  Icthyosaurus. 

"  Notorum-dorando  ! "  the  blithe  Hippocampus  replies. 
"  Chin-chin-orizaba-pelote  ! "  rings  the  jubilant  chorus 

Of  sweet  Pterodactyls  that  wing  the  cerulean  skies.1 

1  "The  Laughing  Muse." 


A  NEW  ENGLAND   HILL 


"Great  lumps  of  pudding  the  giants  threw, 
They  tumbled  about  like  rain." 


CHAPTER  VII 

(JULY) 

They  flung  them  over  to  Roxbury  Hills; 

They  flung  them  over  the  plain; 

And  all  over  Milton  and  Dorchester  too 

Great  lumps  from  the  pudding  the  giants  threw. 

They  tumbled  about  like  rain. 

— The  Ballad  of  the  Boulders. 

THE   STONES  OF  THE  FIELD 

In  our  rambles  during  the  summer  vacation  season  we 
are  constantly  coming  across  boulders;  in  the  mountains, 
in  the  fields  and  by  the  sea.  In  the  mountains  and  near 
rocky  headlands  or  at  the  foot  of  the  cliffs  we  take  them 
for  granted;  they  have  evidently  fallen  from  the  rock  walls 
above  them.  But  haven't  you  often  wondered  how  they 
got  out  on  the  prairies  far  from  any  rock  masses?  This 
145 


146      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

chapter  tells  about  that  and  other  curious  things  in  the 
lives  of  the  great  Boulder  family. 

I.    BIG  CHIEF  BOULDER 

Even  the  Indians  who,  in  those  early  days,  had  never 
gone  to  school  or  studied  geography,  used  to  wonder  how 
these  big  stones  had  travelled  to  the  places  where  they 
found  them. 

Once  upon  a  time  the  Indians  in  the  wilds  of  Minnesota 
found  an  unusually  big  granite  boulder  lying  among  the 
hills.  So  what  did  they  do  but  paint  a  head  with  eagle 
feathers  on  one  end  of  the  stone.  Then  they  put  stripes 
around  its  body.  You  see  they  thought  of  Mr.  Boulder 
as  a  big  chief  in  feathered  head-dress  and  painted  for  war. 

WONDER   THE   BEGINNING   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

It  may  seem  foolish  to  make  all  this  fuss  about  finding 
a  big  stone  in  a  field.  But  these  ignorant  red  men  were 
much  wiser  than  we  are  if  we  don't  wonder  about  it  too. 
Wonder  is  the  beginning  of  knowledge;  and  the  Indians 
thus  took  the  first  step  toward  one  of  the  great  discoveries 
of  geology. 

It  was  just  such  wondering  on  the  part  of  scientific  men 
that  led  to  their  finding  out  not  only  how  these  big  stones 
got  into  strange  lands  but  how  certain  kinds  of  hills  that 
we  have  just  been  reading  about  were  made.  For,  as  you 
must  have  already  guessed,  the  moving  of  these  boulders 
was  one  of  the  many  jobs  Mr.  Glacier  did  for  us  during 
the  Ice  Age.  But  pretend  you  don't  know  the  answer. 
It  took  the  wise  men  a  long  time  to  find  it  and  that's  where 
the  fun  comes  in — in  the  hide  and  seek. 


THE  STONES  OF  THE  FIELD 


147 


From  a  photograph  by  Bourne  &•  Shepherd,  Calcutta 

THE  STRANGE  OLD  INDIAN  OF  MOUNT  ABU 

If  those  Minnesota  Indians  thought  a  boulder  of  the  usual  shape  was  some  big 
chief  from  another  land,  what  would  they  have  thought  if  they  had  set  eyes  on 
this  solemn  old  creature?  He  sits  by  the  hour — like  Socrates  in  the  market-place 
—and  has  sat  for  ages  gazing  down  at  his  image  in  a  lake  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Abu 
in;India.  He  was  carved  into  that  shape  by  sands  blown  from  the  North  Indian 
desert  acting  on  the  softer  parts  of  the  rock.  Most  Indians,  as  you  know,  are  silent 
people,  but  this  old  chap,  so  I  hear,  never  speaks  at  all ! 

Yet  some  day  he  may,  all  of  a  sudden,  take  a  jump !  Boulders  do  that  sometimes, 
as  you  will  see  before  you  have  finished  this  chapter. 


ON  THE  NORTH  END  OF  THE  WORLD 

Some  of  the  boulders  seem  to  have  belonged  to  Alpine 
Clubs,  for  you  find  them  away  up  on  mountain  sides;  some 
of  them  as  high  as  6,000  feet — that's  over  a  mile  you  know 
— above  the  level  of  the  sea.  And  often  these  boulders 
are  not  of  the  same  material  as  the  huge  pieces  of  broken 
rock  that  fall  from  the  neighboring  mountain  walls.  More- 
over the  blocks  of  stone  from  the  mountain  are  angular; 
they  are  not  nicely  rounded  off  as  are  boulders  and  pebbles. 


I48      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


WOULDN'T  IT  MAKE  YOU  NERVOUS,  TOO? 

This  picture  is  from  a  story  about  a  little  boy  who  had  to  cross  a  field  full  of  big, 
dark  boulders  like  this  at  night,  and  how  nervous  it  made  him. 


It's  that  way  all  over  the  north  end  of  the  world  as  far 
south  as  the  Ohio  in  this  country  and  the  Alps  in  Europe. 

But  there's  one  place  in  which  you  never  will  find 
boulders,  and  that's  in  a  country  where  there  are  caves 
of  any  considerable  size.  Neither  will  you  find  such  caves 
where  there  are  boulders. 

Why  shouldn't  the  caves  and  the  boulders  live  happily 
together  just  like  other  people?  The  answer  is  simple. 
The  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age,  with  their  enormous  weight, 
crushed  in  the  roofs  of  caves  in  every  region  over  which 
they  flowed;  and  it  was  these  same  glaciers  that  left  the 
boulders.  Since  the  glaciers  went  away  the  underground 
rivers  that  hollow  out  the  caves  have  not  had  time  to  make 
new  ones.  It  takes  ages  and  ages  to  make  a  nice  big  cave. 


THE   STONES  OF  THE   FIELD  149 

II.    THE  TRAIN  OF  THOUGHT 

'  These  widely  scattered  boulders  furnished  the  students 
of  the  subject  with  the  very  best  evidence  that  there  was 
once  an  Ice  Age.  First,  the  geologists  noticed,  just  as  the 
Indians  did,  that  the  boulders  were  of  a  different  kind  of 
rock  from  that  of  the  regions  in  which  they  were  found. 
Up  in  Wisconsin,  running  southwest  from  Waterloo  is  a 
train  (as  it  is  called)  of  boulders  sixty  miles  long.  The  boul- 
ders are  of  a  very  hard  rock  called  quartzite,  while  all  the 
rock  deposits  in  that  region  are  of  limestone  or  sandstone. 
In  eastern  Wisconsin,  along  with  these  stones,  have 
been  found  pieces  of  copper,  although  there  are  no  copper 
deposits  near  by.  To  the  northeast  of  where  the  frag- 


MR.   BOULDER  ON  HIS  PERCH 

This  is  what  is  called  a  "perched  boulder."  Being  a  harder  kind  of  rock  than 
that  on  which  it  was  left  by  the  glaciers,  it  has  'held  out  against  the  winds  and 
weather,  while  the  stone  under  it  has  been  worn  away. 


150      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

ments  of  copper  were  found  are  the  great  copper  deposits 
of  what  is  now  Michigan,  and  from  this  region  the  glaciers 
brought  the  copper  and  scattered  it  about  as  they  moved 
south  and  southwest.  So  these  mysterious  stones  and 
other  things  kept  pointing  toward  the  north,  in  a  kind  of 
dumb  show. 

In  mountain  rain  storms  you  can  see  the  torrents  driving 
great  stones  before  them,  so  one  of  the  first  theories  about 
the  stranded  boulders  was  that,  at  some  time  in  the  earth's 
history,  there  had  been  great  floods  covering  whole  con- 
tinents, sweeping  away  rocks  from  the  mountains  and 
carrying  them  here,  there,  and  everywhere.  That  theory 
also  accounted  for  the  rounded  shape  of  the  boulders,  for 
if  you  have  a  volume  of  water  big  enough  and  swift  enough 
you  can  roll  boulders  wherever  you  like. 

WHAT  A   QUEER   HOBBY-HORSE! 

But  why  should  the  boulder  trains  all  lead  to  the  north  ? 
And  how  could  water  carry  boulders  right  across  a  deep 
mountain  valley  and  pile  them  high  up  on  the  mountains 
on  the  other  side?  How  could  water  perch  one  boulder 
on  another  or  on  a  flat  ledge  of  rock  or  on  the  summits 
of  the  cliffs?  Boulders  so  perched  are  very  common,  and 
often  they  are  so  nicely  balanced  that  a  man  can  set  them 
rocking;  and  sometimes  a  small  boy  can  do  it.  Every 
young  man  who  goes  to  Dartmouth  College  knows  about 
the  rocking  stone  some  half  mile  east  of  the  college.  In 
the  town  of  Barre  is  a  big  boulder  with  a  small  boulder 
on  its  back,  and  the  small  boulder  can  be  set  rocking  like 
a  child's  hobby-horse. 

The  only  thing  that  could  handle  boulders  in  this  way, 


THE   STONES  OF  THE   FIELD 


HOW   THE   MOUNTAIN   TORRENTS   HELP   SHAPE   THE   BOULDERS 

so  it  turned  out,  were  the  glaciers.  By  following  up  the 
boulders  to  their  homes  in  the  mountains  they  found  on 
the  backs  of  the  glaciers  of  to-day  stones  just  like  those 
in  our  fields,  and  they  found  them  thickly  scattered  over 
the  ground  where  the  glaciers  melted  back  during  the  sum- 
mer months.  The  glaciers  not  only  pick  up  boulders  from 
the  mountain  torrent  beds,  as  they  move  along,  but  them- 
selves pluck  rocks  from  mountain  sides.  Huge  blocks  of 
rock,  dislodged  when  water  freezes  in  the  cracks  of  the 
mountain  walls,  also  fall  upon  the  glacier.  It  was  the 
boulders  held  underneath  the  ice  that  left  their  autographs, 


152      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


HOW  THEY  KNOW  THE  OLD   MEN  DID  IT 

Here  is  one  of  those  heaps  of  boulders,  pebbles,  and  soil  that  the  glaciers  of  the 
Ice  Age  brought  and  left  behind  them.  They  know  those  ancient  glaciers  did 
this,  because  just  such  heaps  are  found  under  the  edges  of  glaciers  to-day. 


deep  grooves  on  the  native  bed-rock  in  the  regions  into 
which  the  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age  came. 

These  great  ice  rivers  filled  the  mountain  valleys,  and 
reaching  far  up  on  the  mountain  sides  carried  boulders 
to  those  heights.  Sometimes  the  glacier  left  the  stones 
standing  on  a  narrow  point  on  top  of  other  rocks — so  mak- 
ing the  rocking  stones. 

III.    LEAVES  FROM  THE  FAMILY  RECORDS  OF  THE 
BOULDERS 

What  I  have  said  so  far  of  the  Boulders  is  mainly  about 
their  travels  into  foreign  lands  and  how  they  were  received 
by  intellectual  people.  But  there  are  many  other  interest- 


THE  STONES  OF  THE  FIELD 


153 


ing  things  to  be  found  in  their  family  records  that  you 
will  want  to  know  about,  I  am  sure. 

HOW  THE  BOULDERS  RODE  ON  THE  WATER 

One  of  these  is  how  they  came  to  ride  on  the  water,  when 
I  said  just  a  little  while  back  that  only  ice  could  carry  them 
across  mountain  valleys,  and  pile  them  up  on  the  moun- 
tain sides.  That  was  all  true;  yet,  under  certain  circum- 
stances, boulders  have  ridden  on  the  water.  As  the  glaciers 
melted  away  finally  in  those  early  days  the  water,  as 
you  know,  helped  make  rivers  and  lakes.  Then,  from  the 
front  of  the  glaciers  icebergs  broke  off  and  floated  away 
down  the  rivers  or  across  the  lakes.  In  these  icebergs  boul- 
ders were  often  imbedded,  and  so  were  dropped  wherever 
the  iceberg  carried  them  before  it  dissolved. 


HOW  THE  BOULDERS  RODE  ON  THE  WATER 

This  is  a  scene  in  August  in  Glacier  National  Park.  It  illustrates  how  boulders 
of  the  Ice  Age  travelled  by  water,  when  icebergs  containing  them  broke  from  the 
glaciers  and  floated  away  on  rivers  and  lakes. 


I54      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Ice  helps  handle  boulders  in  still  another  way;  but  be- 
fore I  tell  you  what  it  is  I  want  you  to  imagine  you  are 
an  Indian,  away  back  in  the  days  before  Indian  schools, 
and  see  if  you  wouldn't  be  as  superstitious  as  they  were. 
Just  suppose  then  that  you  are  a  red  child  of  the  forest, 
and  that  along  a  certain  lake  you  saw  near  the  shore  a  lot 
of  boulders  scattered  about  in  a  disorderly  way.  This, 
say,-  was  in  the  fall.  But  when  you  came  back  the  follow- 
ing spring  you  found  them  all  piled  up  into  a  wall  along 
the  lake,  and  you  positively  knew  no  member  of  your  tribe 
or  of  any  other  had  done  the  piling.  Wouldn't  it  make 
you  feel  a  little  superstitious? 

HOW   MR.    WINTER   BUILDS   BOULDER   WALLS 

It  was  Mr.  Winter  that  built  these  walls.  With  the 
spring  break-up  on  lake  shores  big  cakes  of  ice,  blown  by 
stiff  gales,  pry  up  the  boulders  along  shore,  and  force  them 
further  up  the  bank.  Then  another  gale  and  another  push, 
and  more  stones  are  crowded  up  on  top  of  the  first  course, 
and  so  there  is  built  a  rude  wall.  Some  of  the  stones  may 
be  crowded  together  side  by  side.  This  makes  what  is 
called  a  " boulder  pavement."  But  even  this  isn't  all  of 
nature's  engineering  in  the  handling  of  boulders.  Here  is 
another  example.  Ice  is  formed  on  lakes  early  in  the  win- 
ter when  the  air  is  but  little  below  the  freezing  point  of 
water.  Under  these  circumstances  ice  expands.  Then, 
with  the  first  severe  cold  spell  it  contracts  and  so  cracks. 
Water,  rising  from  below,  fills  these  cracks,  and  is  itself, 
in  turn,  frozen  to  ice.  Then  comes  a  warm  wave,  these 
ice  wedges  swell,  and  so  the  ice  sheet  expands,  pushes  up 
along  the  shore  and,  if  there  are  any  boulders  there  moves 
them  about;  or  sometimes  drives  them  deep  into  the  bank 


THE  STONES   OF  THE   FIELD  155 

so  that  the  following  spring  it  looks  as  if  somebody  had 
been  shooting  at  the  bank,  using  boulders  for  bullets. 

The  sun  shapes  boulders  somewhat  as  the  blacksmith 
shapes  iron,  but  instead  of  striking  with  a  hammer  it  strikes 
with  its  rays.  Rock  is  a  poor  conductor  of  heat,  so  the 
heat  from  the  sun  only  goes  into  the  rock  a  little  way.  The 
result  is  that  the  surface  expands  and  so  loosens  itself  from 
the  rock  beneath  and  in  course  of  time  falls  off.  With 
the  cooling  of  the  atmosphere  at  night  just  the  opposite 
thing  takes  place;  the  surface  cools  off  first  and  so,  con- 
tracting, loosens  itself  from  the  body  of  the  stone.  It  seems 
to  be  a  regular  tug  of  war  between  the  heat  of  the  day  and 
the  cool  of  the  night.  First  of  all  the  corners  and  sharp 
edges  break  away  because,  being  thinner,  they  are  heated 
and  cooled  more  quickly.  The  boulders  owe  their  rounded 
shapes  most  of  all,  however,  to  the  fact  that  they  were 
ground  together  in  the  body  of  the  glaciers  as  those  great 
ice  sheets  flowed  along. 

GOOD  TALKS  BY  LEARNED  BOULDERS 

Of  course,  the  boulders,  like  other  people,  differ  in  their 
tastes — as  you  can  tell  by  their  talk.  The  granite  boulders 
have  the  most  to  say  about  travel  because  they  are  so  hard 
that  they  can  take  longer  journeys  than  weaker  rocks, 
and  so  have  more  to  tell.  But  there  is  another  branch  of 
the  family  that  is  still  more  "bookish"  as  you  may  say. 
These  are  the  "pudding  stone"  boulders — conglomerates. 
In  that  most  interesting  biography,  "The  Story  of  a  Boul- 
der," Professor  Geikie  describes  a  stone  that  was  not  only 
made  up  of  a  variety  of  pebbles,  but  in  which  there  was  a 
section  of  sandstone.  The  sandstone  and  the  conglomerate 
had  been  neighbors  in  some  rock  ledge  just  as  the  pebble 


156      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

section  and  the  smooth  sand  section  are  always  neighbors 
where  the  shores  descend  into  the  sea.  So  when  the  rock 
mass,  which  was  finally  rounded  into  a  boulder,  broke 


WHERE  THE  SEA  HELPS  SHAPE  THE   BOULDERS 

away  it  included  portions  of  both  sandstone  and  conglom- 
erate. 

The  upper  part  of  this  boulder — the  sandstone — had 
in  it  stems  and  leaflets  of  plants  of  the  Coal  Age,  changed 
to  coal.  The  pebbles  below  were  fragments  of  more  ancient 
rocks  made  at  a  time  when  frogs  as  big  as  the  oxen  of  to- 
day lived  in  the  marshes. 

"They  must  have  had  a  croak  like  a  fog-horn,"  said 
the  High  School  Boy. 

In  this  story  of  the  boulder,  Professor  Geikie  says: 

"I  had  here  a  quaint  old  black  letter  volume  of  the 
Middle  Ages  giving  an  account  of  the  events  taking  place 
at  the  time  it  was  written  and  containing  in  its  earlier  pages 
numerous  quotations  from  the  authors  of  antiquity." 


THE  STONES  OF  THE  FIELD  157 


WHICH  DO  YOU  SAY? 

The  "quotations  from  the  authors  of  antiquity,"  were 
the  pebbles,  of  course,  once  parts  of  older  rocks. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  boulders  as  authors.  You  will  also 
be  interested  in  their  relations  with  artists.  Boulders  add 
much  to  the  picturesque  effect  of  the  shores  of  lakes  and 
seas  and  mountain  ravines,  as  they  appear  to  the  traveller, 
and  as  artists  reproduce  them  in  pictures.  They  also 
add  to  the  beauty  of  streams,  by  forming  rapids.  These 
boulders  that  are  piled  in  so  thick  as  to  make  rapids  are 


158      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

brought  in  by  smaller  but  swifter  tributaries  that  flow 
into  larger  but  more  sluggish  streams.  Rapids  are  favorite 
topics  for  landscape  artists.  They  are  characteristic  of 
the  work  of  Ruysdael,  for  example,  with  whom  you  have 
become  well  acquainted  in  your  picture  studies  in  school. 
Of  the  drawing  of  stones  in  general  Ruskin  says: 
"There  are  no  natural  objects  out  of  which  an  artist, 
or  any  one  who  appreciates  the  form  of  things,  can  learn 
more  than  out  of  stones.  A  stone  is  a  mountain  in  minia- 
ture. The  fineness  of  Nature's  work  is  so  great  that  into 
a  single  block  a  foot  or  two  in  diameter  she  can  compass 
as  many  changes  of  form  and  structure  on  a  small  scale 
as  she  needs  for  her  mountains  on  a  large  one,  using  moss 
for  forests  and  grains  of  crystal  for  crags."1 


WHY  BOULDERS  SOMETIMES  TAKE   A  JUMP 

Boulders  sometimes  jump  up,  all  of  a  sudden,  as  if  they  had  sat  on  a  pin.  They 
do  this  when  an  earthquake  wave  passes  straight  through  the  globe;  from  Ecuador, 
say,  to  Borneo:  Such  waves,  called  "waves  of  transmission,"  travel  "incog"  as 
it  were,  not  causing  any  disturbance  until  they  reach  the  surface  again.  Then  if 
there  happens  to  be  a  big  rock  on  the  spot,  up  it  jumps — the  funniest  thing  you 
ever  saw ! 

Harry  Furniss,  the  famous  English  cartoonist,  made  this  picture  just  for  a  joke. 

1  "Modern  Painters." 


THE   STONES  OF  THE  FIELD  159 

On  page  157  you  will  find  two  pictures  of  stones  by  two 
famous  landscape  artists,  Claude  and  Turner.  Of  the 
stones  in  one  picture  Mr.  Ruskin  says,  "they  are  massy 
and  ponderous  as  stones  should  be";  while  the  stones  in 
the  other  picture  are  "wholly  without  weight." 

In  which  of  the  pictures  would  you  say  the  stones  are 
"massy  and  ponderous,"  and  in  which  are  they  "wholly 
without  weight?" 

Now  look  at  the  "Hide  and  Seek"  notes  below  and  see 
if  you  and  Mr.  Ruskin  think  alike. 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

A  boy  scout,  as  you  know,  is  expected,  among  other  things,  to 
be  an  Indian  (a  good  Indian,  of  course);  to  keep  his  eyes  wide 
open  as  he  goes  about  in  the  woods  and  fields.  In  that  way  he  is 
always  coming  across  things  to  wonder  over,  such  as  the  big  stone 
the  Indians  found. 

It's  just  such  boys  that  great  men  are  made  of.  All  the  great 
scientists  began  in  that  way. 

Take  the  case  of  Hugh  Miller,  for  example.  In  the  encyclo- 
pedias you  will  meet  him  as  a  famous  geologist,  along  with  great 
artists  and  inventors  and  statesmen  and  other  fine  company;  but 
at  first  he  was  only  a  boy,  like  the  rest  of  us.  And  he  had  very 
little  chance  to  go  to  school,  but  he  went  anyhow;  went  to  school, 
like  Lincoln,  to  all  the  good  books  he  could  get  hold  of  and  also 
to  the  stones  of  the  field.  After  a  while  he  got  so  he  could  write 
books  himself,  and  they  are  among  the  most  readable  books  you 
ever  saw.  You  just  read  his  story  of  "The  Old  Red  Sandstone," 
and  if  you  don't  open  your  eyes ! 

The  encyclopedia  will  tell  you  a  great  deal  about  the  boy  him- 
self and  about  "Uncle  Sandy"  and  "Uncle  James,"  and  how  they 
helped  him.  But  the  start  of  it  was  this: 

One  day  a  mason  in  Scotland l  broke  off  a  piece  of  stone — he  was 
building  a  wall  at  the  time — and  inside  of  the  stone  he  found — 
what  do  you  think  ?  A  fish  !  Inside  of  the  stone,  mind  you  ! 

Of  course  you  won't  be  surprised  to  hear  that  it  was  a  queer,  out- 
1  Hugh  was  a  Scotch  boy. 


160      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

landish  sort  of  fish,  and  that  it  was  dead.  In  fact,  it  had  been 
dead  so  long  that  it  also  had  turned  to  stone.  In  short,  it  was  a 
fossil.  But  no  Pharaoh  in  his  huge  pyramid  ever  became  more 
famous  than  did  that  little  fish  in  his  tomb  of  stone. 

Yet,  would  you  believe  it? — neither  the  mason  nor  his  fellow 
workmen  thought  much  about  it.  They  frequently  came  upon 
these  fossils  and,  beyond  being  idly  curious  at  first,  paid  little 
attention  to  them. 

This  day,  however,  among  these  workmen  was  Hugh  Miller, 
who  was  also  a  stone-mason  by  trade.  Hugh  got  as  excited  over 
this  fish  as  a  boy.  (He  was  only  seventeen  at  the  time,  I  believe.) 

"The  story  of  this  queer  fish,"  he  said  to  himself,  "must  be  as 
good  as  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  and  the  Yellow  Dwarf,  and  Jack  the 
Giant  Killer,  that  I  used  to  like  so  well  when  I  was  a  little  lad;"  * 
and  he  determined  to  find  out  all  he  could  about  it.  He  found 
from  the  geology  books  that  there  was  much  yet  to  be  learned 
about  such  fish,  and  so  he  proceeded  to  study  the  stones.  He 
opened  the  stones  with  his  hammer  as  you  open  a  book.  He  put 
in  all  his  leisure  time  at  this  work,  with  the  result  that  he  not  only 
became  one  of  the  world's  famous  geologists,  but  he  wrote  books 
in  which  he  made  it  a  point  to  tell  these  curious  stories  of  ancient 
life  in  the  sea,  so  that  people  -.vithout  any  previous  scientific  knowl- 
edge could  read  and  enjoy  them. 

Besides  "The  Old  Red  Sandstone"  he  wrote  "Footprints  of  the 
Creator,"  "The  Testimony  of  the  Rocks,"  "My  Schools  and 
School  Masters,"  "Scenes  and  Legends  of  the  North  of  Scotland," 
and  a  book  of  poems.  Not  all  the  conclusions  he  came  to  are 
accepted  to-day — for  geology,  like  all  the  sciences,  is  always  grow- 
ing— but  the  history  of  its  growth  and  how  men  reasoned  things 
out  is  quite  as  interesting  and  profitable  as  the  facts  themselves, 
and  Hugh  Miller  has  a  particularly  attractive  way  of  telling  things. 

So  you  see  those  Indians  who  painted  up  old  Big  Chief  Boulder 
were  on  the  right  track;  they  were  deeply  interested  in  it  and  its 
being  there  as  a  great  and  mysterious  work  of  nature.  They 
named  it  "Waukon,"  an  Indian  word  meaning  "mystery." 

Oh,  yes,  and  about  boulders  in  art,  it's  the  stone  in  the  upper 
of  the  two  pictures  that  Ruskin  considers  "massy  and  ponderous" 
and  hence  true  to  nature.  Turner  painted  it. 

1  He  had  read  all  these  stories  and  a  lot  more,  so  my  old  Chambers' 
Encyclopedia  says. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

(AUGUST) 

In  the  parching  August  wind 
Cornfields  bow  the  head. 

— Christina  G.  Rossetti. 

Over  the  sea-like,  pathless, 
Limitless  waste  of  the  desert. 

— Longfellow. 

THE  DESERT 

August  is  usually  such  a  hot,  dry  month  that  it  ought 
to  be  a  good  time  for  talking  of  deserts.  We  can  realize 
better  what  a  desert  is  and  what  an  interesting  region  it 
must  be  to  those  who  spend  their  lives  there — the  Arabs 
and  the  camels,  for  instance.  In  fact,  there  are  so  many 
strange  and  striking  things  to  be  seen  and  learned  in  deserts 
that  whole  books — including  many  stories — have  been 
written  about  them,  and  I'm  sorry  we  can  give  the  subject 
only  one  chapter. 

I.    THE  FACE  or  THE  DESERT 

I  sometimes  think  it  was  no  wonder  the  old  Sphinx  got 
to  asking  conundrums.  Always  looking  toward  the  desert 
and  its  mysteries,  how  could  he  help  it?  The  desert  is 
just  full  of  conundrums.  For  instance: 

Where  is  it  that  rains  fall  without  reaching  the  earth  ? 


162    STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


From  the  painting  by  Elihu  Vedder 

THE  QUESTIONER  OF  THE  SPHINX 

Where  is  it  that  there  are  lake  beds  without  lakes,  river 
beds  without  rivers,  and  rivers  without  mouths? 

Where  do  you  see  stretches  of  water  that  aren't  there, 
and  men  and  animals  walking  and  trees  growing — most  of 
them  upside  down? 

Where  are  the  roses  of  the  land  and  the  waves  of  great 
inland  seas  made  of  sand  and  where  does  the  wind  always 
blow  the  mountains  away? 

Of  course  you  would  probably  give  the  right  answer  at 
once — "the  desert" — because  you  know  I  am  talking 
about  deserts.  And  the  "water  that  isn't  there,"  and  the 


THE  DESERT  163 

trees  and  people  and  things  that  are  upside  down — you 
probably  know  that's  the  mirage;  and  that  the  inland  seas 
with  their  waves  of  sand  are  the  dunes;  that  the  rivers 
without  mouths  are  those  that,  like  the  Tajunga  in  Cali- 
fornia, lose  their  waters  in  the  sand. 

Most  people  who  have  gone  to  school  know  all  these 
things.  Most  people  also  think  of  the  desert  as  just  a  sea 
of  sand  and  all  tawny,  like  a  lion's  skin;  but  this  is  wrong. 
The  Romans  used  to  call  the  African  desert  "the  panther's 
skin,"  because  of  the  tawny  stretches  spotted  with  the  dark 
palms  of  the  oases,  but  the  sands  are  not  all  tawny,  and 
the  desert  isn't  all  covered  with  sand. 

If  we  could  arrange  to  get  on  the  back  of  any  one  of 
the  great  birds  of  the  Sahara — say  an  eagle  or  his  big 
cousin  the  vulture — and  sail  with  him  on  his  way  to  din- 
ner, the  scenery  would  unroll  beneath  us  something  like 
this: 

On  the  northern  border  the  Atlas  Mountains,  with  preci- 
pices of  wild  beauty  and  ranges  of  bare,  pink  rock  outlined 
against  the  blue  of  the  morning  sky;  then  dune  waves 
stretching  for  miles  and  miles  with  valleys  between  them, 
so  wide  that  it  takes  the  camels  from  breakfast  time  until 
noon  to  lumber  their  way  across.  The  crests  of  some  of 
these  dune  waves  go  spinning  off  in  spray  with  every  fresh- 
ening breeze.  Little  dunes  often  dissolve  away  in  the 
wind  as  the  caravan  moves  toward  them. 

GAUNT   OUTLINES   OF   THE   HUNGRY  HILLS 

Then  we  come  to  more  mountain  ranges  running  right 
across  the  desert's  face,  their  bare  rocks  shivered  and 
shelving  down  into  broken  fragments  at  their  feet;  then 


1 64     STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

j 


AN  OASIS 

sharp-edged,  jagged  hills — not  rounded,  plump,  and  well- 
fed  hills,  such  as  we  have  at  home.  They  are  the  bones 
of  the  hungry  landscape  showing  through.  Then  we  come 
to  bare  tablelands  and  the  empty  beds  of  rivers  and  lakes 
that  long  ago  went  dry;  valleys  scattered  with  boulders  of 


THE   DESERT  165 

all  sizes  and  in  every  imaginable  position;  and  so  on  over 
into  the  Arabian  desert,  with  its  flats  of  white  sand  closed 
in  by  high  cliffs,  and  vast  stretches  of  black  and  red  gravel. 


THE  DARK  HILLS  AND   THE   FIGURES  IN  WHITE 

"The  Baths  of  the  Damned,"  the  superstitious  Arabs  call  the  region  of  the 
Northern  Sahara  in  which  you  come  upon  these  strange  white  figures.  The  fear- 
some name  was  suggested  by  the  fact  that  the  figures  slowly  rise  from  some  hot 
region  inside  the  earth.  In  reality  they  are  mounds  of  carbonate  of  lime  deposited 
by  the  water  of  hot  springs  heavily  charged  with  dissolved  limestone.  Similar 
springs  in  our  Yellowstone  Park  spout  up  in  the  form  of  geysers  and  form  "geyser 
basins"— huge  stone  tubs.  Here  in  the  desert  the  water  doesn't  spout;  it  bubbles 
up  slowly  and  so  builds  the  mounds.  In  the  background  you  see  black  masses  of 
volcanic  rock,  for  this,  like  Yellowstone  Park,  is  a  volcanic  region  where  the  under- 
ground rocks  haven't  cooled  off. 


More  of  the  sand  and  gravel  of  the  desert  is  red  than  yel- 
low; but  some  of  it  is  white  and  some  of  it  is  black. 


A  CHAOS  OF  COLOR  IN  THE  ROCKS 

The  desert  wears  rocks  and  stones  of  as  many  colors  as 
the  jewels  of  Oriental  kings.  It  also  runs  much  to  solemn 
black  in  its  heaps  of  volcanic  rock  with  cold  limestones  on 


1 66      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  heights;  but  you  can  see  blue-grays,  browns,  ochres  of 
every  shade  gleaming  in  the  sun,  the  reds  of  the  rusting 
iron  in  them  staining  the  precipices  and  the  walls;  and 
there  are  purples  and  pinks  and  dark  greens  and  violets. 
These  colored  rocks  are  often  fantastically  mixed  together, 
like  the  colors  on  an  Easter  egg. 

THE    SKELETONS   OF   THE  DEAD  RIVERS 

And  here  we  come  upon  one  of  those  skeletons  of  dead 
rivers  that  I  spoke  about.  There  they  are,  the  river  val- 
leys and  the  river  beds,  full  of  sand  and  gravel,  and  with 
boulders  along  the  banks,  and  branch  valleys  running  into 
them;  a  river  system  all  complete  but  for  one  thing — water. 
It's  just  as  if  the  main  valley  and  the  branches  had  been 
made  all  ready  but  the  river  never  came;  or  as  if  there  had 
been  rivers  there  once  but  they  couldn't  stand  the  climate  ! 
Of  course,  when  a  cloudburst  comes  along  it  helps  itself  to 
these  ready-made  river-beds;  but  for  the  most  part  they 
stand  as  empty  as  the  ruins  on  the  desert's  edge  in  which 

.     .     .     the  lion  and  the  lizard  keep 
The  courts  where  Jamshyd  gloried  and  drank  deep.1 

Not  only  do  the  size  of  the  river-beds  show  that  there 
used  to  be  more  frequent  rains  in  these  regions  of  desola- 
tion, but  right  at  the  edge  of  the  northern  Sahara  are  the 
remains  of  immense  aqueducts;  great  troughs  built  of 
stone  and  carried  on  bridges  from  the  source  of  a  water 
supply  to  a  city.  When  the  Romans  owned  the  earth — 
including  the  Sahara  desert — they  were  famous  builders  of 
these  aqueducts. 

1  "The  Rubaiyat"  of  Omar  Khayyam. 


THE  DESERT 


167 


WHY  DYING  RIVERS  MULTIPLY  BY  TWO 

Director  Hornaday,  of  the  New  York  Zoo,  took  this  picture  while  in  the  arid 
regions  of  the  great  Southwest.  It  shows  a  little  stream  dying  away  in  the  desert 
sands.  Now  just  notice  how  a  little  knowledge  of  nature's  methods  as  a  land- 
scape artist  makes  the  most  commonplace  scenery  interesting.  All  streams  as 
they  go  dry  have  a  tendency  to  spread  out  arms  like  that;  sometimes  two,  some- 
times four  or  more,  but  always  in  twos  or  multiples  of  two.  The  reason  is  that 
as  the  water  evaporates  the  stream  becomes  weaker  and  so  is  obliged  to  drop  a 
part  of  its  load.  The  heaviest  part  of  the  load — the  most  pebbles,  sand,  and  soil — 
is  carried  in  the  middle  of  the  stream,  owing  to  the  current  being  stronger,  relieved 
as  it  is  from  the  friction  of  the  banks.  So  bars  of  sand,  gravel,  and  such  stuff  are 
built  up  that  finally  divide  the  water  into  two  branches.  Then  if  the  water  keeps 
on  flowing,  each  of  these  branches  divides  by  two,  and  so  on.  You  see  the  same 
thing  in  the  mouths  of  deltas. 


1 68      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

"But  what  about  the  roses  made  of  sand?  That's  a 
conundrum  you  didn't  answer." 

Oh,  yes,  we  must  get  down  closer  to  the  desert  to  see 
these.  We  can't  see  them  in  the  bird's-eye  view  we  have 


ALL  THE   COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

Children  in  the  primary  grades  have  here  told  us,  with  their  clever  little  fingers, 
about  life  in  Africa  immediately  south  of  the  big  desert,  the  part  of  Africa  where 
they  have  rain  and  to  spare. 

been  taking.  The  desert  sand  has  a  great  deal  of  gypsum 
in  it,  and  when  the  sand  gets  a  wetting  from  a  cloud-burst 
this  gypsum  crystallizes  and  forms  what  are  called  "sand 
roses."  These  "roses"  are  of  various  sizes  and  forms; 
some  look  like  camelias  and  some  like  a  cluster  of  pearls. 
They  are  not  common  and  you  have  to  hunt  for  them. 

II.  How  THE  DESERT  MAKES  ITS  SAND 
Most  of  the  sand  of  the  desert,  as  you  may  imagine,  is 
home-made;  and  it  is  very  curious  to  notice  the  different 


THE  DESERT 


169 


HOW   THE   ARAB   FARMER    GATHERS   HIS   DATES 


170      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

ways  in  which  it  is  manufactured.     The  desert  sun  and 
the  cloudless  nights  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  it. 

Think  of  the  hottest  day  in  August  you  ever  saw,  and 
then  multiply  by  two.  That  will  give  you  an  idea  of  how 
hot  a  desert  gets  in  the  day-time — something  like  200 
degrees;  and  212  degrees  boils  eggs,  you  know!  But  how 
cold  do  you  suppose  it  gets  at  night?  Fifteen  minutes 
after  sunset  the  temperature  drops  to  freezing.  The  rea- 
son of  this  is  that  there  are  no  clouds  over  the  desert  to 
keep  the  heat  of  the  sand  wastes  and  the  burning  rocks 
from  passing  off  rapidly  into  space.  The  days  are  so  hot 
and  the  nights  are  so  cold  that  the  rocks  get  a  kind  of  fever 
and  ague,  which  makes  them  pull  themselves  to  pieces. 

THE  "GOOSE-FLESH"  ON  THE  ROCKS 

It  is  the  same  process  we  have  just  read  about  in  the 
story  of  the  stones  of  our  fields,  only  it  goes  on  much  faster 
in  the  desert  on  account  of  the  more  rapid  changes  of  tem- 
perature. You  know  how  your  skin  will  pucker  up  into 
goose-flesh  when  you  are  cold.  The  desert  rocks  do  some- 
thing similar.  Because  rock  is  a  poor  conductor,  the  heat 
of  the  day  and  the  cold  of  the  night  penetrate  only  a  little 
way — only  through  the  skin  of  the  rock,  as  it  were;  so  this 
skin,  stretching  in  the  day-time  and  puckering  up  at  night, 
becomes  loosened  and  shells  off  bit  by  bit.  Then  it  is 
blown  about  and  in  time  ground  into  sand  by  the  desert 
winds. 

Some  rocks  have  an  additional  way  of  getting  picked  to 
pieces.  Granite  is  one  of  these.  It  has  several  different 
kinds  of  mineral  in  it,  and  some  of  these  minerals  contract 
and  expand  faster  than  others;  some  more  than  others. 


THE  DESERT  171 

As  a  consequence,  the  particles  of  the  rock  keep  pulling 
and  hauling  at  each  other.  This  helps  to  break  it  up  into 
little  pieces,  which  soon  become  sand.  The  darker  the 
rock,  other  things  being  equal,  the  greater  the  changes, 


Norton's  "Elements  of  Geology."    By  permis- 
of  Ginn  and  Company 

HOW  RAIN-DROPS  HELP  SPLIT  BOULDERS 

A  big  boulder  in  western  Texas  split,  just  as  you  see  it  here,  by  rain-drops,  with 
the  help  of  the  sun,  and  under  the  conditions  described  in  the  text,  sat  for  this 
photograph.  A  friend  of  mine  who  has  been  all  over  that  country  says  that  on 
blistering-hot  days  you  can  see  little  pieces  pop  put  of  the  granite  boulders,  like 
chips  from  an  invisible  chisel  struck  by  an  invisible  hammer.  This  is  why:  We 
Granites  are  made  up  of  particles — little  bits — of  several  different  minerals,  and 
some  of  these  minerals  expanding  much  faster  than  others  pop  themselves  out. 


because  anything  dark — a  suit  of  clothes,  for  instance — 
absorbs  heat  faster  than  a  light  object. 

The  great  mountain  rocks  of  the  desert,  bare  of  all  pro- 
tecting soil  and  verdure,  are  always  crumbling  as  a  result 
of  all  these  causes,  and  so  the  winds  are  constantly  blowing 
them  away,  piece  by  piece. 

HOW   LITTLE  RAINDROPS   SPLIT  BIG   BOULDERS 

As  if  everything  in  the  desert  were  in  the  sand-making 
business  the  very  rain-drops  help  make  sand.  The  rain- 
drops  do  this  in  much  the  same  way  that  the  farmer  breaks 


172      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

big  boulders  in  his  fields,  so  that  he  can  more  easily  haul 
them  away,  piece  by  piece.  He  builds  a  fire  against  the 
boulder,  gets  it  as  hot  as  he  can,  then  rakes  the  fire  away, 
dashes  water  on  the  stone,  and — bang !  It  cracks  as  if  old 
Thor  had  struck  it  with  his  hammer. 

You  see  why  this  is,  don't  you,  after  what  we  have  been 
saying  about  why  the  rock's  skin  chips  off?  The  water 
suddenly  cools  the  highly  heated  rock,  and  the  parts 
shrinking  pull  away  from  each  other  with  a  bang !  bang ! 
bang !  The  hot  desert  rocks,  dashed  by  the  torrents  of  a 
cloudburst,  break  apart  just  like  that,  and  you  can  hear 
them.  Stones  twenty-five  feet  across  are  often  broken  into 
many  pieces  after  a  downpour.  Then  the  finer  pieces  of 
rock  that  are  made  in  this  continual  splitting,  and  by  the 
chipping  that  goes  on  day  and  night,  the  fierce  winds  grind 
against  each  other;  so  manufacturing  sand.  And  the 
fiercer  winds  also  drive  coarse  sand  against  crumbling  rock 
surfaces,  thus  grinding  them  away  and  making  more  sand. 
So  the  winds,  using  sand  to  make  sand,  put  the  sand  out 
at  interest,  you  may  say. 

And  on  all  its  sand,  .made  in  these  various  ways — by 
wind  and  rain  and  heat  and  cold,  and  the  crystal  fairies  of 
the  land  of  change — the  desert  puts  its  special  trade-mark, 
just  as  a  manufacturer  puts  his  trade-mark  on  his  goods. 
If  you  should  take  some  desert  sand  and  some  sand  from 
the  shores  of  the  sea  and  show  them  to  a  man  who  knows 
about  such  things,  he  would  say  (after  he  had  put  them 
under  a  microscope,  of  course) : 

THE  DESERT'S  TRADE-MARK  ON  ITS  SANDS 

"This  sand  came  from  a  desert,  or  from  some  place 
where  it  was  much  blown  about  by  the  winds;  while  this 


THE  DESERT 


173 


sand  is  from  the  shores  of  the  sea,  or  of  a  lake."  The  sand 
grains  of  the  seashore,  although  they  are  always  being 
tumbled  about  by  the  waves,  as  the  desert  sands  are  by 
the  winds,  are  protected  from  each  other  by  the  water 


A  DESERT  SIMOOM  ON  ITS  TRAVELS 

A  traveller  in  the  Sahara  took  this  snap-shot  of  a  simoom  from  the  outside  and  at 
a  safe  distance.  You  can  see  that  it  must  be  quite  a  distance  from  where  we  are 
standing,  for  the  trees  in  the  foreground  are  still.  The  vast  cloud  of  sand  looks 
quite  dark  because  of  the  shadows  cast  by  the  sun,  which  it  hides  from  view. 


between  them.  These  little  water  cushions  prevent  the 
sand  grains  from  rubbing  together;  so  they  keep  a  good 
many  of  their  sharp  edges.  They  are  not  rounded  like 
the  sands  of  the  desert.  The  winds  keep  the  desert  sands 
grinding  against  each  other,  at  the  same  time  turning  them 
over  and  over,  so  wearing  them  away  pretty  evenly  on 
all  sides.  It  also  grinds  them  against  the  desert  rocks. 

It  is  as  if  there  were  cut  upon  the  sea  sands,  "Father 
Neptune:  His  Make";  while  the  genii  of  the  desert,  jealous 


174   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

for  the  desert's  reputation,  had   engraved  on  their  own 
product: 

"Genuine  Desert  Sand.     Look  for  the  Trade-Mark  and 
Accept  No  Substitutes!" 


III.    THE  PLANT  PEOPLE  OF  THE  DESERT 

Although  it  doesn't  look  a  bit  homey  to  us  there  are 
quite  a  few  people  living  in  the  desert,  when  you  come  to 
count  them  all — four-legged  people,  and  six-legged  people, 
and  two-legged  people,  and  big  and  little  people  with 
wings,  and  the  people  of  the  plant  world. 

THE   WATER   BOTTLE    OF   THE   DESERT 

One  of  the  most  curious  of  the  plant  people  is  the  cactus, 
particularly  the  one  known  as  the  "desert  water  bottle." 
Like  many  two-legged  people  it  has  a  rough,  unsociable 
exterior,  but  a  kind  heart.  Let  a  traveller  come  upon 
one  of  these  bristly  cactuses,  after  long,  thirsty  hours,  and 
he  will  realize  what  this  means.  Inside  this  cactus  he  will 
find  what  will  seem  to  him  the  most  delightful  drink  he 
ever  tasted.  While  it  isn't  as  cool  as  it  might  be,  neither 
is  it  as  warm  as  you  woujd  expect,  and  it  has  a  pleasant, 
sweet  taste. 

The  fact  that  you  can  get  a  drink  in  this  way,  just  when 
you  want  it  most,  all  comes  of  foresight  on  the  part  of  the 
cactus.  After  they  get  down  from  two  to  four  inches  in 
the  ground  the  roots  of  this  cactus  spread  out  in  every 
direction  and  for  a  long  way.  They  collect  every  bit  of 
moisture  in  the  soil,  and  they  make  the  most  of  every  drop 
of  rain  that  falls  within  their  reach.  Then  they  hide  all 


THE  DESERT 


175 


DRAWING  WATER  FROM  THE  BARREL  CACTUS 

This  cactus,  so  far  as  shape  is  concerned,  really  belongs  to  the  barrel  family,  as 
you  can  see,  besides  performing  one  of  the  most  useful  functions  of  a  barrel  in  hold- 
ing good  drinking  water  for  thirsty  travellers  in  the  desert.  My,  how  thirsty  you 
get !  You  drink,  drink,  drink  from  sunrise  to  sunset — about  two  gallons  a  day. 
But  sometimes  the  supply  you  are  carrying  gives  out  because  you  miscalculated  or 
you've  lost  your  way,  or  the  barrel  leaks.  Then,  oh,  how  you  welcome  the  sight 
of  a  barrel  cactus  among  the  rocky  foot-hills !  Director  Hornaday,  in  the  delightful 
book  from  which  I  have  already  quoted  says:  "You  get  a  gallon  of  water  surprisingly 
cool,  and  in  flavor  like  the  finest  raw  turnip.  The  object  on  the  ground  is  not  a 
circular  saw,  but  the  inverted  top  of  the  cactus,  and  the  whiteness  is  that  of  the 
white  meat  that  contains  the  water.  With  a  stick  the  meat  is  pounded  to  a  pulpy 
mass,  and  the  water  oozes  out,  forming  a  little  pool.  Then  the  man  with  the  clean- 
est hands  washes  them  cleaner  with  some  of  the  pulp — throwing  this  pulp  away,  of 
course — then  squeezes  the  water  out  of  the  rest  of  it  into  the  barrel." 

Another  interesting  thing  about  this  cactus  is  that  it  enables  you  to  get  candy 
right  in  the  desert;  for  here  and  there,  through  its  thick  skin,  it  oozes  out  a  secretion 
called  "cactus  candy,"  which  is  very  delicious.  You  are  always  sorry  there  is  so 
little  of  it. 


176   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

this  moisture  away  and  cling  to  every  precious  drop. 
Most  plants,  you  know,  evaporate  a  great  deal  of  water 
through  their  leaves.  But  the  cactus,  living  in  a  world 
where  rains  are  few  and  far  between,  just  can't  afford  to 
do  any  evaporating  to  speak  of;  so  it  has  practically  no 
leaves,  you  see,  only  little  bits  of  things  that  you  almost 
have  to  take  a  microscope  to  find.  But  what  it  lacks  in 
leaves  it  makes  up  in  spines,  which  defend  it  against  the 
attacks  of  most  thirsty  animals,  although  it  is  believed  the 
desert  mice  know  the  secret  of  getting  at  this  water,  in 
spite  of  the  spines. 

One  kind  of  desert  plant  you  have  no  doubt  met  face  to 
face,  for  it  is  used  to  make  printing  paper.  It  grows  in 
the  deserts  of  Libya  and  other  parts  of  North  Africa,  and 
is  called  esparto  grass.  Like  hemp,  it  has  stems  which 
are  full  of  strong  fibres.  These  stems  are  gathered  in  huge 
bundles,  which  are  carried  by  camels  to  the  sea,  where 
they  are  sent  by  ship  to  the  English  paper  mills. 

HOW  THE  "ROSE  OF  JERICHO"  GOES  TO  SEA 

But  there  is  a  member  of  the  desert  plant  family  called 
the  "Rose  of  Jericho,"  that  doesn't  wait  for  anybody  to 
come  after  it  and  carry  it  to  sea;  it  just  picks  up  and  sets 
sail  for  itself.  It  is  a  bush  about  six  inches  high,  a  native 
of  the  wastes  of  Northern  Africa,  Palestine,  and  Arabia. 
It  bears  a  little  four-petaled  flower.  When  blossom  time 
is  over  the  leaves  fall  off  and  its  branches,  loaded  with 
seeds,  dry  up,  and,  curling  inward  as  they  dry,  form  a 
ball.  Its  roots  also  let  go  of  the  soil,  so  that  the  strong 
desert  winds  easily  pull  it  up  and  it  goes  bowling  away 
toward  the  sea,  When  it  gets  there  it  tumbles  in. 


THE  DESERT  177 

Then  this  bold  little  traveller^  who  is  very  sensitive  to 
moisture  although  he  has  had  so  little  of  it  in  his  bringing 
up,  promptly  unfolds  his  arms  and  scatters  hjs  handful  of 


THE   CACTUS-WREN  AND   HER  LITTLE  FRONT  DOOR 

Speaking  of  cactus  spines,  do  you  know  how  many  of  those  wicked  little  spines 
the  cactus-wren  had  to  work  with  and  tug  and  twist  about  in  building  that  nest? 
About  two  thousand !  These  spines  not  only  make  the  nest  but  defend  it.  You 
can't  be  too  careful  about  your  front  door  in  Desertland.  Such  neighbors  1 


seeds  on  the  water;  which  is  precisely  the  thing  he  took  all 
that  journey  to  do !  For  the  seeds  are  carried  far  by  the 
currents  of  the  sea.  Thus  the  family  to  which  this  plant 
belongs  keeps  sending  out  colonies  into  new  lands.  This 
seems  to  be  one  of  the  chief  missions  in  life  of  plants  as  of 
other  peoples. 


178   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

The  plant  of  which  we  have  just  been  speaking  is  called 
the  "Rose  of  Jericho,"  although  it  looks  so  little  like  a 
rose  that  quaint  old  John  Gerard,  an  English  doctor  who 
loved  and  studied  plants  over  three  hundred  years  ago, 
says: 

"The  coiner  of  the  name  spoiled  it  in  the  mint;  for  of 
all  plants  that  have  been  written  of  not  any  are  more 
unlike  unto  the  rose." 

THE  WIND  WITCHES  OF  THE  STEPPES 

Our  own  tumbleweeds  and  the  Canada  thistle  have  the 
same  trick  of  bowling  before  the  wind.  There  is  a  relative 
of  these  tumblers  living  on  the  Russian  steppes  that  the 
Cossacks  call  the  "wind  witch."  At  the  end  of  the  season 
the  branches  dry  up  into  a  ball  and  then  by  the  hundreds 
these  witches  go  skimming  over  the  plains,  driven  by  the 
loud  autumn  winds.  They  are  as  light  as  a  feather,  and 
they  go  so  fast  that  sometimes  even  the  Cossack  horsemen 
cannot  catch  them,  as  they  often  try  to  do  in  sport.  Part 
of  the  time  they  move  along  with  a  short,  quick,  hopping 
motion,  and  then,  caught  by  an  eddy,  rise  a  hundred  feet 
in  the  air. 

Often  dozens  of  them  get  locked  together,  join  hands 
like  the  real  witches  of  our  fairy  tales,  and  the  whole  com- 
pany goes  dancing  away  before  the  howling  blast. 

Eery  creatures ! 

IV.    THE  AUTOGRAPHS  IN  THE  SAND 
There  are  certain  very  interesting  people  of  the  desert 
that  you  don't  often  find  at  home,  not  because  they  aren't 
there,  but  because  they  don't  want  to  be  found.     Snakes, 


THE  DESERT 


179 


THE  COYOTE'S  NOCTURNE 

In  addition  to  what  he  tells  so  cleverly  in  the  picture  about  the  night  song  of 
the  Coyote,  Dan  Beard — your  Dan  Beard  of  the  Boy  Scouts — says  the  animal  is  a 
ventriloquist;  can  throw  his  voice  so  that  it  sounds  as  if  he  were  a  mile  off,  then 
startle  you  with  the  noise  of  a  full  pack  at  your  heels — and  all  the  time  be  sitting 
watching  you  from  behind  a  stone  not  fifty  yards  away ! 


lizards,  rabbits,  and  ground  squirrels  slip  quietly  out  of 
your  way  in  the  early  morning,  and  by  the  time  the  hot 
sun  is  high,  beast  and  bird  seek  the  shadows  of  the  canyons, 
or  of  big  rocks,  shelving  banks,  or  caves. 

But  they  all  leave  word.  In  the  lava  beds  of  the  Ari- 
zona desert,  where  not  even  the  cactus  will  grow,  you  can 
make  out  the  tracks  of  the  quail  and  the  linnet,  and  of  a 
peculiar  desert  bird  called  the  road-runner.  There,  also, 
are  the  tracks  of  the  coyote  and  the  wildcat,  the  gray 
wolf,  and  sometimes  the  mountain  lion.  If  about  day- 
break you  saw  what  seemed  to  be  a  long,  lean,  hungry 
dog,  trotting  away  slantwise  with  a  cautious  eye  to  the 
rear,  it  was  probably  a  gray  wolf  a  little  late  in  getting 
home.  Like  the  coyote,  the  wildcat,  the  owl,  and  many 
other  desert  people,  that  old  gray  wolf  belongs  to  the 


i  So      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

world's  great  night  shift  and  is  usually  back  in  his  moun- 
tain home  by  sunrise.  Even  when  you  see  him  at  all — 
which  is  seldom — he  is  hard  to  make  out;  for,  like  the 
coyote,  he  wears  a  rusty,  sunburned  coat,  which  blends 
with  the  sand  and  the  yellow  rocks. 

The  coyote  is  a  smaller  member  of  the  wolf  family,  to 
which  both  the  dog  and  the  fox  belong.  He  has  much  of 
the  same  cunning,  and  like  Br'er  Fox  is  fond  of  chicken. 
But  his  home  is  usually  so  far  from  modern  conveniences 
he  has  few  chances  to  visit  poultry  yards,  and  lives  from 
paw  to  mouth,  as  it  were,  catching  a  jack-rabbit  when  he 
can — the  desert  rabbits  seem  to  sleep  with  both  eyes  open 
— and  lizards  when  he  can't  get  rabbits.  At  the  worst  he 
will  make  out  on  "prickly  pears,"  the  pods  of  the  mesquite 
bush,  which  are  full  of  seeds. 

THE  WINGED  PEOPLE  OF  THE  DESERT 

Although  you  will  not  realize  it  at  first  there  are  a 
good  many  birds  in  the  desert.  Some  are  transients,  just 
passing  through,  and  stopping  for  a  rest  and  a  bite  or  two 
on  the  way.  Others,  such  as  the  linnet  and  the  wrens, 
have  nests  tucked  away  among  the  spines  of  the  cactus, 
and  there's  a  finch  singing  from  the  top  of  that  bush !  In 
flower  time  in  the  Arizona  desert  (of  which  we  are  now 
speaking)  there  are  humming-birds,  but  their  colors  are 
not  so  bright  as  those  of  our  humming-birds.  Feathers, 
like  hair,  have  the  natural  color  burned  out  of  them  in  the 
desert  sun.  Only  the  insects  keep  their  bright  clothes. 
Turn  over  a  stone  and  away  will  scamper  golden  beetles, 
silver  beetles,  turquoise  blue  beetles,  beetles  in  bronze;  a 
whole  boxful  of  jewels  on  six  legs. 


THE  DESERT 


181 


From  McCook's  "Nature's  Craftsmen."     Copyright  Harper  and  Brothers 
THE  LIFE  STRUGGLE  IN  THE  DESERT 

The  late  Harry  Fenn,  who  did  everything  so  well,  drew  this  picture  of  one  of 
the  incidents  of  the  life  struggle  in  the  desert.  It  represents  the  desert  wasp,  known 
as  the  "tarantula  killer,"  pursuing  its  prey.  The  tarantula  of  the  Southwest  is 
the  giant  among  our  native  spiders,  but  it  cowers  before  the  wasp,  and  hurries  off 
as  fast  as  it  can;  but  usually  it  can't,  and  is  soon  laid  away  in  Lady  Wasp's  nest 
as  food  for  her  solitary  baby  when  it  comes  out  of  the  egg  which  the  mother  wasp 
lays  in  the  spider's  body. 


INSECTS,    LIZARDS,    SPIDERS,   AND   OTHERS 

And  there  are  gray  lizards,  yellow  lizards,  and  lizards 
called  "skinks,"  with  tails  as  blue  as  indigo;  and  the  gila 
monster,  a  lizard  in  dull  orange  and  black,  with  an  ugly 
disposition  and  poison  in  his  lower  jaw.  Another  big 
lizard  of  the  Arizona  desert  is  called  the  chuckwalla.  The 
Arizona  Indians  are  very  fond  of  him.  They  say  he  tastes 
like  chicken. 


182   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Most  of  the  spider  family  are  represented  in  Arizona, 
including  the  trap-door  spider,  who  hides  and  waits  for 
his  dinner  in  a  hole  with  a  wonderful  trap-door  that  he 
made  himself.  This  door  he  slams  tight  when  he  gets  you 
inside,  if  you're  a  fly  or  anything  like  that.  He  also  shuts 
this  door  in  the  face  of  his  enemy,  the  centipede,  a  flat 
worm  a  foot  long,  with  loads  of  legs  and  feet.  His  name 
means  "hundred  footed."  He  has  poison  daggers  in  his 
feet  and  his  two-branched  tail. 

WHAT  A   WONDERFUL   FLYING  MACHINE   HE   is! 

But  what's  that  away  up  in  the  sky  ?  A  flying  machine  ? 
Yes,  one  of  the  most  wonderful  flying-machines  in  the 
world — a  vulture.  There  he  goes,  sweeping  in  wide  cir- 
cles, as  he  hunts  along  the  mountain  range,  mile  after 


A  DESERT  BEETLE  AND   HIS   GYMNASTICS 

This  desert  beetle  is  called  by  the  Indians  "The-Bug-that-Stands-on-His-Head." 
At  first  I  thought  he  was  taking  stomach  exercises,  for  beetles  have  wonderful 
digestions,  as  you  may  learn  from  Fabre's  book  on  "The  Sacred  Beetle."  But  Mr. 
Howard,  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Entomology  at  Washington — Uncle  Sam's  great 
authority  on  bugs — tells  me  this  is  an  attitude  many  beetles  take  on  the  approach 
of  an  enemy,  the  object  being  to  discharge  a  kind  of  -poison-gas  which  is  intended  to 
drive  him  away;  and  usually  does. 


THE  DESERT  183 

mile,  closely  scanning  the  base  of  the  cliffs  for  the  bodies 
of  unfortunate  creatures  that  have  fallen  over.  Vultures 
will  keep  in  the  air  in  that  way  whole  days  at  a  time,  fol- 
lowing the  cliffs  and  canyons  for  hundreds  of  miles.  But 
for  all  that  it  is  sometimes  a  week  or  two  between  meals 
with  a  desert  vulture. 

How  does  the  vulture  soar  so  wonderfully?  Nobody  is 
quite  sure  about  it.  Often  for  hours  there  is  no  motion 
of  the  wings,  as  far  as  anybody  has  been  able  to  make  out, 
and  a  soaring  vulture  seems  to  be  able  to  move  as  easily 
against  the  wind  as  with  it.  You'll  not  be  surprised  to 
hear  that  it  takes  time  to  learn  to  fly  like  that — a  whole 
year.  And  even  after  the .  first  year  the  young  vultures 
stay  for  a  good  while  under  the  instruction  of  their  parents, 
going  out  hunting  with  them  every  day  and  sleeping  with 
them  in  the  nest  on  the  cliffs  at  night. 

V.    A  DAY  IN  THE  SAHARA 

How  would  you  like  to  spend  a  day  in  the  famous  Sahara 
desert  with  the  camels  and  the  people  and  the  dogs;  and, 
I  was  going  to  say,  the  flies?  But  the  flies  can't  stand  it. 
They  stay  in  the  villages  on  the  borders.  Only  a  few  are 
ever  bold  enough  to  start  with  a  caravan  and  these  soon 
turn  back. 

When  a  desert  Arab  and  his  family  start  on  a  journey 
the  tents,  the  sleeping-rugs,  the  scanty  provisions,  and 
the  women  and  children  are  piled  on  the  camels,  the  dogs 
take  their  places  at  the  end  of  the  procession  and  the  men 
at  the  head,  and  the  caravan  starts. 

As  the  chieftain  throws  the  end  of  the  burnoose  (his 


1 84      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK! 

This  looks  to  me  like  the  beginning  of  a  simoom;  if  so,  we'd  better  wrap  our 
shawls  about  our  faces  as  the  Arabs  are  doing.  Notice  how  the  rising  wind  picks 
up  and  twirls  the  sand  about  the  camels'  legs  and  sends  it  stinging  into  the  faces 
of  the  men.  Maybe  it  will  die  down  as  quickly  as  it  came;  maybe  it  will  increase 
into  a  choking  sand-storm  that  will  last  a  week. 


hooded  cloak)  across  his  shoulder  and,  with  his  carbine 
in  the  hollow  of  his  arm,  stalks  in  advance  of  all,  you  feel 
that  if  you  were  an  Arab  boy  you  would  be  as  proud  as 
he  is  to  have  a  father  like  that.  What  a  splendid  figure; 
what  a  strong,  grave,  handsome  face,  and  utterly  without 
fear !  All  his  poor  possessions  would  hardly  pay  a  month's 
rent  in  a  fine  city  apartment,  but  he  has  the  proud  bearing 
of  a  king.  He  looks  as  if  he  had  just  stepped  out  of  a  pic- 
ture in  a  Bible  story-book. 

And  how  keen  those  dark  eyes  must  be;    and  what  a 
memory  for  the  look  of  things !    At  the  beginning  of  the 


THE  DESERT 


185 


day's  journey  he  is  guided,  as  sailors  are  at  sea,  by  the 
stars.  But  soon  the  winds  begin  to  rise,  as  the  desert  farther 
away  is  warming  under  the  sun,  and  the  fine  sand  drifts 
and  shifts  like  snow,  filling  up  our  own  tracks  as  fast  as 
they  are  made;  so,  you  may  be  sure,  it  is  leaving  no  guid- 
ing tracks  made  by  previous  travellers.  But  this  man 
has  known  every  hill,  every  dune,  and  every  rocky  gully 
along  the  way  since  he  himself  was  a  little  boy,  and  went 
over  this  same  route  sitting  on  the  camel  with  his  mother 
while  his  father  stalked  on  before. 

Presently  we  come  across  another  little  group  of  travellers 
going  in  another  direction.  They  are  on  their  way  north 
to  the  summer  pastures;  for  you  see  they  have  a  little 


A  CARAVAN  ON  THE   MARCH 

Here  is  a  caravan  lumbering  along  over  what  appears  to  be  a  pretty  well-beaten 
roadway  in  Algeria  where  many  improvements  to  facilitate  travel  have  been  made 
by  the  French.  It  must  be  about  8.00  A.  M.  or  4.00  P.  M.  Shouldn't  you  say  so, 
from  the  shadows? 


1 86   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


THE  FORLORN  LITTLE  RAT  OF  THE  DESERT  SANDS 

If  you've  read  Roosevelt's  books  on  Africa  you've  met  this  little  creature  before. 
But  isn't  he  the  rattiest-looking  rat  you  ever  saw?  He  has  only  a  hair  here  and 
there  on  his  yellow  skin;  and  no  eyes  to  speak  of.  He  can  hardly  see  at  all,  spend- 
ing most  of  his  time,  as  he  does — like  the  sightless  creatures  of  caves — in  the  pitch- 
dark  of  his  underground  burrow.  Yet,  I  suppose,  like  that  desert  boy  it  tells  about 
at  the  end  of  this  chapter,  he  thinks  there's  no  place  like  home ! 


flock  of  sheep  and  goats  and  two  donkeys.  And  there  are 
two  men.  These  people  are  probably  two  families  travelling 
together.  But  they  are  not  so  well-to-do  as  our  Arab. 
They  have  no  camel  to  carry  the  women  and  children.  So 
dogs,  donkeys,  men,  women,  children,  and  the  sheep  and 
goats  all  tramp  along  together. 

They  are  not  worried  because  they  are  poor;  for  listen, 
they  are  singing!  It's  a  melancholy  kind  of  song,  as  we 
think.  It  reminds  us  of  the  queer  sound  the  sand  grains 
make  when  the  desert  winds  are  beginning  to  blow.  But 
to  the  Arab  it  is  music.  What  a  lot  of  verses  it  has — all 
just  alike — and  sung  over  and  over  again. 

But  what's  the  matter  now?  All  of  a  sudden  they  stop 
singing  and  begin  to  shout  and  fire  off  their  guns.  You'll 


THE  DESERT 


187 


laugh  when  I  tell  you  why.  They  heard  something  talk- 
ing back  to  them;  repeating  all  their  words.  It  was  only 
an  echo  made  by  the  rocks  of  the  mountains  that  we  have 
just  reached.  But  these  superstitious  people  of  the  desert 
don't  know  what  an  echo  is.  They  think  echoes  are  the 
voices  of  evil  spirits  mocking  them,  and  the  shouting  and 
the  firing  of  the  guns  is  to  frighten  these  mockers  away. 

Life  for  everybody  in  the  Sahara  and  the  Arabian  desert 
is  very  much  what  it  is  for  the  animals  in  the  Arizona  wastes 
— a  constant  struggle  for  food.  In  the  Arizona  desert  every 
living  creature  puts  in  all  its  time  trying  to  get  something 
to  eat  without  being  eaten.  The  wildcat  is  fortunate  if 
he  gets  a  meal  once  in  two  or  three  days;  and  while  the 
coyote  is  trying  to  slip  up  on  a  rabbit,  ten  to  one  there's  a 
panther  slipping  up  on  him.  A  traveller  in  northern  Africa 


Lai^B  Tree 


Small  Creosote 
Bush 


Length  shown.  10 CMC., 


Abandoned  holes  rt  Q 


Holes  m  uat   « 


W.T,H. 


THE   PACK-RAT'S  FORTRESS 

This  is  a  diagram  of  the  fortress  of  another  little  citizen  of  mountain  rocks  and 
desert  places,  known  out  West  as  the  "pack"  rat  because  he  is  always  packing  off 
other  people's  things  and  hiding  them  in  his  burrow.  The  "fortress  consists  of 
several  burrows,  the  roads  leading  to  which  are  carefully  protected  by  the  prickly 
bayonets  of  the  cactus  joints  which  the  rat  drags  there  for  that  purpose. 


1 88      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

tells  how,  when  his  caravan  halted  for  dinner  at  an  inn 
for  the  French  soldiers  quartered  in  that  region,  he  saw 
a  lean  and  hungry  cat  eying  him  from  around  the  corner 
of  a  near-by  hut.  To  borrow  from  Victor  Hugo's  descrip- 
tion of  the  hungry  cat  at  the  Spanish  inn,1  this  cat  of  the 
desert  looked  at  the  traveller  "as  if  it  would  have  asked 
nothing  better  than  to  be  a  tiger."  When  the  guest  of 
the  inn  had  finished  the  piece  of  chicken  he  was  eating  he 
tossed  the  bone  toward  the  cat  which  pounced  on  it  fiercely. 
Instantly  a  dog,  which  had  been  watching  proceedings, 
rushed  forward  and  took  the  bone  from  the  cat.  Just  then 
an  Arab,  who  happened  to  be  passing,  fell  upon  the  dog 
and  wrenching  the  bone  from  his  mouth  began  eagerly 
gnawing  it  himself. 

It's  a  hard  life ! 

And  yet  if  you  should  bring  an  Arab  boy  to  London  or 
New  York  to  live  and  give  him  three  good  meals  a  day — 
he's  not  always  sure  of  one  at  home — and  nice  clothes  to 
wear  and  a  real  bed  to  sleep  in,  and  shady  parks  to  play 
in,  do  you  suppose  he  would  be  happy?  No  indeed.  The 
thing  has  been  tried.  He  says  this  kind  of  life  is  all  right 
for  those  who  like  it,  but  it  isn't  the  desert. 

And  you  have  to  admit  it ! 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

Not  at  all  dry,  are  they— these  deserts — when  you  get  down 
into  them?  And  I  haven't  told  you  half  there  is  to  tell  about 
them.2 

1  "Hugo's  Letters  to  His  Wife." 

"  John  C.  Van  Dyke,  for  one,  has  written  a  wonderfully  interesting 
little  book  just  about  the  American  desert.  It's  called  simply  "The 
Desert." 


THE   DESERT  189 

To  begin  with,  what  does  your  geography  say  about  deserts — 
about  how  they  are  made? 

How  do  mountains  help  make  deserts? 

In  and  near  what  zone  does  your  geography  locate  the  great 
deserts  of  the  world? 

How  does  the  Sahara  desert  compare  in  size  with  the  United 
States?  (You  see,  the  Sahara  is  practically  a  whole  United  States 
gone  dry !) 

Yet,  the  soil  of  much  of  the  Sahara  is  very  fertile  and  with  water 
would  yield  wonderful  crops.  But  where  is  the  water  to  come 
from?  Where  do  we  get  the  water  that  has  made  our  deserts 
bloom?  Has  the  Sahara  any  such  sources  of  supply? 

Is  it  true  that  the  Libyan  desert  was  once  covered  by  the  sea, 
as  it  was  in  that  story  of  Phaeton,  the  boy  who  set  the  world 
afire? 

And  speaking  of  that  story,  was  there  a  Jupiter  and  a  Jupiter 
Pluvius,  too?1 

Wouldn't  you  say  the  addition  of  "Pluvius"  to  the  name  of  their 
chief  god  meant  the  ancients  recognized  rain-making  as  a  very 
important  and  difficult  business  to  manage? 

But  what  is  it,  really,  that  brings  our  rains?  What  has  the 
sea  to  do  with  it?  And  the  winds?  And  the  mountains?  Your 
geography  answers  all  these  questions  briefly.  You  will  find  a 
full  treatment  of  the  whole  subject  of  the  weather  and  of  how  the 
weather  man,  "the  man  with  a  hundred  eyes,"  manages  to  be  so 
clever,  in  "Pictured  Knowfedge."  2 

From  what  general  direction  do  the  winds  come  that  bring  the 
rains  in  North  America?  In  South  America?  Why  the  differ- 
ence? 

How  many  inches  of  rainfall  are  enough  for  raising  good  crops? 

Nevertheless,  they  raise  fine  crops  in  many  parts  of  the  United 
States  where  they  have  hardly  any  rain  at  all.  How  do  they 
manage  it  ?  I  mean  how  do  they  store  up  the  water  and  distribute 
it,  and  everything?  (Irrigation.) 

In  reading  up  on  deserts  in  the  encyclopedias  alone  you  will  find 

1  "That  was  a  good  deal  like  asking  if  there  was  a  George  Washing- 
ton and  a  President  Washington  too,"  said  the  High  School  Boy,  after 
he  had  looked  it  up. 

2  In  the  article  in  the  Nature   Department,   "What  is  the  It  that 
Rains?" 


i  go      STRANGE   ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

many  such  interesting  things  as  the  following,  and  in  other  books 
— particularly  books  of  travel — much  more: 

How  long  the  commercial  caravans  are  (such  great  freight  trains 
as  those  that  cross  the  Sahara  between  Morocco  and  Timbuctoo) ; 
how  many  camels  one  driver  takes  care  of;  how  fast  the  camels 
travel;  how  many  days  they  can  go  without  a  drink. 

If  you're  going  to  cross  with  one  of  these  caravans  (or  just  pre- 
tend to  cross)  I  must  tell  you  one  thing: 

You've  got  to  look  out  for  lions  I 

From  what  you  have  learned  in  your  geography  about  African 
lions,  where  would  you  say  you  were  likely  to  come  across  them  ? * 

What  do  these  caravans  bring  back  from  Central  Africa  ?  (What 
is  produced  in  Central  Africa  that  the  civilized  world  wants?) 

The  ostrich  is  a  most  interesting  citizen  of  the  desert  that  I 
didn't  have  room  to  talk  about.  There's  enough  for  a  whole 
chapter  in  your  note-book  just  about  ostriches  and  their  ways. 

Among  other  things,  I  wish  you'd  find  out  for  me  if  the  ostrich 
really  does  bury  its  head  in  the  sand  and  imagine  that  it  is  thereby 
hiding  itself.  (I'll  warrant  you  it's  only  book  ostriches  that  do 
this;  not  real  ostriches.) 

One  of  the  most  curious  things  about  Mrs.  Ostrich  is  how  she 
and  her  neighbors  work  together.  It's  like  an  old-fashioned  quilt- 
ing bee,  for  all  the  world;  although,  to  be  sure,  the  ostriches  don't 
make  quilts — they  make  nests.2 

Speaking  of  ostrich  nests  naturally  suggests  eggs — and  very  big 
eggs,  of  course,  including  the  roc's  egg  in  the  "Arabian  Nights." 
.They  do  have  real  rock's  eggs  in  the  desert,  only  this  kind  of  a 
roc's  egg  is  spelled  with  a  "k."  You  just  turn  to  the  chapter  on 
deserts  in  Hobb's  "Face  of  the  Earth,"  and  you'll  find  not  only 
that  there  are  such  eggs,  but  how  the  desert  sun  uses  salt  in  cook- 
ing them  and  what  the  crystal  people  have  to  do  with  it;  and  how, 
like  a  cat  in  a  hen-house,  the  desert  winds  suck  these  eggs,  leaving 
only  the  hollow  shell. 

1Have  you  read  Roosevelt's  "African  Game  Trails"?  or  his  "Life 
Histories  of  African  Game  Animals"? 
2  "Romance  of  Animal  Arts  and  Crafts." 


CHAPTER  IX 

(SEPTEMBER) 

MORNING 

The  summer  dawn's  reflected  hue 
To  purple  changed  Loch  Katrine  blue. 

—Scott:  "Lady  of  the  Lake." 

EVENING 

Now  folds  the  lily  all  her  sweetness  up 
And  slips  into  the  bosom  of  the  lake. 

— Tennyson  .  "  The  Princess." 

IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES 

If  we  really  had  spent  the  month  of  August  in  a  desert 
what  a  relief  it  would  be  to  find  ourselves,  as  we  do  now 
at  the  very  beginning  of  the  golden  autumn  time,  in  the 
lands  of  the  lakes  with  their  cool,  fresh  breezes,  the  whis- 
per of  leaves  and  the  glint  of  waters  dancing  in  the  sun. 
The  best  of  it  is  that  the  deserts  are  just  as  delightful  as 
the  lands  of  pleasant  waters,  if  you  only  visit  them  in 
imagination  as  we  have  been  doing;  and  they  make  the 
lakes  all  the  more  attractive  by  way  of  contrast. 

I.    How  THE  LAKES  ARE  BORN 

But  where  are  the  lands  of  the  lakes?     I  may  say  to 
start  with,  it's  no  use  looking  for  many  lakes  in  the  lands 
of  the  big  caves.     Caves  and  lakes  don't  seem  to  get  on 
together  any  more  than  do  caves  and  boulders. 
191 


192      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

When  this  story  of  the  lakes  was  first  told  to  a  certain 
group  of  young  people  some  of  the  youngest  of  whom  had 
not  forgotten  the  giants  or  the  language  of  their  fairy 
tales,  I  put  it  in  this  way: 

'The  rains  and  the  rivers,  with  the  help  of  some  other 
things,  have  made  all  the  lakes  in  the  world.  One  of  these 
helpers  is  a  bright-eyed  creature  with  two  legs;  another 
a  little  creature  with  four  legs  and  a  third  a  great  big  thing 
with  no  legs  at  all!"  (I  said  it  like  this:  "G-R-E-A-T 
B-I-G  T-H-I-N-G,"  and  opened  my  eyes  wide  for  the 
benefit  of  the  younger  members  of  our  "pebble  parties," 
as  these  little  gatherings  came  to  be  called.) 

The  great  big  things,  as  you  have  already  guessed,  were 
the  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age.  We  have  had  specimens  of 
their  work  in  the  story  of  how  the  Great  Lakes  were  made. 

The  four-legged  lake  makers  are  the  beavers.  They 
live  on  the  margins  of  quiet,  shallow  ponds — really  little 
lakes — which  they  make  for  themselves  by  gnawing  down 
trees  and  building  dams. 

And  the  bright-eyed  creature  with  two  legs — can't  you 
guess  who  he  is?  If  you  never  helped  make  little  lakes 
of  your  own  by  damming  up  a  brook  or  a  roadside  rivulet, 
you  have  missed  a  lot  of  fun. 

WIDE  RANGE   OF   SIZE   IN   LAKE   FAMILY 

But  you  must  have  made  them;  what  boy  hasn't?  And 
those  little  ponds  or  puddles  were  lakes;  while  they  lasted, 
just  as  much  as  the  great  Lake  Superior  is  a  lake.  Even 
lakes  that  are  called  lakes  and  get  their  names  (and  often 
their  pictures)  in  summer  resort  folders,  differ  in  size,  rang- 
ing from  little  affairs  that  are  not  much  larger  than  the 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES  193 


THE  GREAT  LAKES  OF  TO-DAY  AND  THE  GREATER  LAKE 
OF  YESTERDAY 

The  farmers  of  Canada  and  the  Dakotas  now  sow  their  harvests  and  reap  their 
golden  grain  on  the  bottom  of  the  great  inland, sea  of  the  Ice  Age,  Lake  Agassiz. 
It  was  larger  than  all  the  Great  Lakes  of  to-day  put  together.  It  is  known  how 
big  this  lake  was  from  its  old  beaches,  which  can  easily  be  made  out  all  around  the 
margin  shown  on  the  map. 


pond  in  the  meadow,  to  Lake  Superior,  with  its  31,000 
square  miles;  and  in  depth,  from  a  few  feet  to  5,618  feet 
in  the  deepest  part  of  Lake  Baikal.  You  see  if  you  touched 
bottom  there  you  would  have  to  keep  going  for  over  a 
mile. 

"And  there's  all  the  way  back!"  said  the  High  School 
Boy. 


194      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


THE  BLUE  LAKE  IN  THE  VOLCANO'S  MOUTH 

In  the  mouth  of  a  dead  volcano  lies  one  of  the  most  beautiful  lakes  in  all  the 
world,  the  chief  attraction  of  Crater  Lake  National  Park.  This  model  of  its  basin 
tells  how  nature  did  the  work.  The  steep  sides  and  the  glacial  valleys  show  that 
the  top  fell  in  when  the  lava  that  helped  build  the  volcano  sank  back  and  so  left 
it  without  support.  If  the  top  had  blown  off,  as  volcano  tops  sometimes  do,  the 
valleys  would  have  been  filled  with  debris.  Later  there  was  another  outbreak, 
but  so  small  that  it  only  built  that  little  volcano  in  the  big  volcano's  mouth.  No- 
tice the  tiny  crater?  This  baby  volcano  rises  above  the  waters  of  its  mimic  ocean 
and  makes  an  island,  just  as  so  many  volcanoes  of  the  great  Pacific  make  the  far- 
flung  islands  of  the  Southern  Seas. 


Even  the  water  ouzel,  that  wonderful  diver  of  the  moun- 
tain lakes  and  waterfalls,  might  hesitate  at  a  dive  like  that. 
Those  remarkable  old  men  of  the  mountains,  the  glaciers 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES  195 

of  the  Ice  Age,  were  the  greatest  of  all  lake-makers.  Al- 
though for  size  the  Great  Lakes  were  their  masterpieces, 
they  made  lakes  of  all  sizes  and  no  end  of  them.  They 
fairly  sowed  the  landscape  with  lakes.  Look  at  the  map 


LOOKING  ACROSS  THE  LAKE  TO  WIZARD  ISLAND 

There  you  see  is  the  top  of  that  little  volcano — right  across  the  lake.  It  is 
known  as  "Wizard  Island."  The  lake  is  4,000  feet  deep.  Its  walls  are  1,500 
feet  high;  in  some  places  over  2,000  feet  high.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  they,  as 
you  see,  slope  a  good  deal,  owing  to  the  crumbling  down  of  the  weathered  rock, 
the  banks  are  still  so  steep  it  has  taken  us  several  hours  of  careful  climbing  to  get 
down  where  this  picture  was  taken,  and  we  shall  be-all  the  rest  of  the  forenoon 
climbing  back  again. 


of  the  lake  regions  of  America  and  Europe  and  then  turn 
back  to  the  map  picture  of  the  great  ice  invasion  (page 
21).  Don't  you  see  the  lake  regions  and  what  was  once 
the  ice  regions  cover  practically  the  same  territory? 

In  addition  to  making  lakes  in  their  Great  Lakes  manner 
the  glaciers  had  other  methods.  A  glacier  coming  into  a 
dry  mountain  valley  would  supply  it  with  a  river  by  melt- 
ing, and  at  the  same  time  dam  up  the  river  with  stones 


196   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

and  soil  brought  down  from  the  mountain  and  so  make 
a  lake.  Then  the  water  would  run  over  the  brim  of  the 
dam,  and  the  thing  was  complete;  a  beautiful  little  lake 
with  one  river  running  into  it  and  another  running  out. 

LOOKS   AS   IF  IT  HAD   RAINED    LAKES  ! 

You  just  go  through  Wisconsin  or  Minnesota  or  Maine, 
and  right  and  left  you'll  see  lakes  and  lakes  and  lakes: 
and  then  more  lakes !  Of  course  most  of  these  lakes  are 
small;  otherwise  it  wouldn't  have  been  possible  to  work 
so  many  of  them  into  the  same  landscape.  In  Wisconsin 
you  find  these  small  lakes  in  what  are  called  the  ''Kettle 
Ranges."  The  low  hills  and  their  valleys  form  what  the 
early  settlers  called  "kettles,"  and  in  these  kettles  are  the 
little  blue-eyed  lakes. 

It  was  the  glaciers  that  not  only  made  the  kettles  but 
often  filled  them  with  the  lakes.  In  many  of  the  mounds 
of  pebbles  and  clay  that  we  read  about  in  "The  Secrets 
of  the  Hills,"  the  glaciers  left  big  blocks  of  ice.  Then, 
when  this  ice  melted,  two  things  happened:  (i)  The  cover- 
ing of  the  ice  sank  down,  much  as  the  sawdust  sinks  in 
an  ice-house  when  a  block  of  ice  is  taken  out,  thus  mak- 
ing the  kettle;  (2)  the  big  ice  cake  in  the  hill  of  pebbles 
melted,  so  filling  the  kettle  with  a  lake. 

But  what  broke  off  these  big  blocks,  these  land  icebergs 
that  made  the  basins  for  the  kettle  lakes?  They  were 
left  by  the  glacier  when  it  began  to  retreat;  that  is  to  say 
when  the  supply  of  snow  back  at  the  gathering  ground 
became  insufficient  to  keep  pushing  it  forward  as  fast  as 
the  front  melted  away.  Melting  most  rapidly  in  those 
huge  cracks  called  crevasses,  big  blocks  were  finally  sepa- 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES 


197 


rated  entirely  from  the  main  body  and  left  behind  as  the 
rest  of  the  glacier  slowly  melted  back  toward  the  moun- 
tains. 

If  the  glaciers  were  thus  responsible  for  most  of  the  lakes 
of  the  lowlands  you  may  be  sure  they  had  a  hand  in  mak- 


ONE  OF  THE  KETTLE  LAKES  OF  WISCONSIN 


ing  the  lakes  of  the  mountains,  right  where  they  themselves 
live.  John  Muir,  who  spent  his  life  in  loving  study  of  the 
mountains  of  the  West  and  of  everything  connected  with 
them,  found  mountain  lakes  in  every  stage  of  existence 
up  the  mountainsides;  empty  stone  bowls  that  showed 
by  the  work  of  the  waves  on  the  rocks  that  they  had  once 
held  lakes;  above  these,  in  the  same  chain,  lakes  growing 
shallow;  and,  still  higher,  brand  new  lakes  in  stone  bowls 
with  the  edge  of  the  glacier  that  had  carved  out  the  bowl 
and  filled  it  with  blue  water,  still  bordering  it  on  the  upper 
side. 


198      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

And  this  is  why,  like  fruit  on  a  tree,  the  youngest  lakes 
are  found  at  the  top.  Since  the  glacier  melted  from  the 
foot  of  the  range  upward  the  lower  lakes  were  the  first 
to  be  born  and  the  first  to  pass  away;  while  the  lakes  higher 
up  on  the  mountain  were  the  last  to  be  born  and  the  last 
to  pass  away. 

II.    THE  MOODS  OF  THE  LAKES 

Lakes  are  like  the  rivers  and  the  sea;  they  have  their 
moods.  In  sunshine  and  storm,  in  wind  and  calm,  and 
from  season  to  season  they  show  many  changes.  As  we 
already  know  they  are  great  sleepy  heads.  To  Ruskin 
mountain  lajkes  seemed  both  to  sleep  and  to  dream.  But 
their  longest  sleep,  like  that  of  Br'er  Bear,  is  taken  in  the 
winter.  Of  this  long  sleep  Mr.  Muir  says : l 

"The  highest  (mountain  lakes)  are  set  in  bleak,  rough 
bowls,  scantily  fringed  with  brown  and  yellow  sedges. 
Winter  storms  blow  snow  through  the  canyon  in  blinding 
drifts,  and  avalanches  shoot  from  the  heights.  Then  are 
these  sparkling  tarns  filled  and  buried,  leaving  not  a  hint 
of  their  existence.  In  June  and  July  they  begin  to  blink 
and  thaw  out  like  sleepy  eyes,  the  daisies  bloom  in  turn 
and  the  most  profoundly  buried  of  them  all  is  at  length 
warmed  and  summered  as  if  winter  were  only  a  dream." 

EVEN   THE   DUCKS   OVERLOOK   THESE   LITTLE   LAKES 

But  possibly  these  lakes  are  not  asleep  after  all !    They 

may  be  only  playing  possum;    or  hide  and  seek.     There 

are  mountain  lakes  that  play  hide  and  seek.     That  is  to 

say,  they  hide  and  you  seek;    and  often  you  don't  find  ! 

1  "The  Mountains  of  California." 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES 


199 


They  are  so  small  that,  surrounded  as  they  are  by  trees, 
tall  and  thickly  set,  even  the  ducks  pass  them  by.  The 
glaciers  that  made  them  seem  to  have  hidden  them,  as  the 
robins  did  the  babes  in  the  wood.  The  glaciers  did  this, 


A  LITTLE   GIRL'S  PICTURE  OF  A  FAMOUS  SWISS  LAKE 

This  picture  of  the  lake  of  the  Great  St.  Bernard  was  taken  by  Phyllis  M.  Pul- 
liam,  who  sent  it  to  St.  Nicholas  with  a  long,  enthusiastic  letter,  such  as  only  school- 
girls know  how  to  write.  Among  other  things  she  met  a  great  St.  Bernard  dog 
that  had  saved  more  than  fifty  lives. 

not  by  heaping  leaves  over  them,  but  by  piling  up  stones 
and  soil  around  them.  They  are  encircled  by  moraines, 
and  on  the  moraines  grow  the  trees  that  hide  the  lakelets 
even  from  the  sharp  eyes  of  the  ducks. 

Mountain  lakes  are  usually  as  clear  as  crystal,  and,  like 
perfect  mirrors,  reflect  the  outlines  and  coloring  of  the 
clouds  and  the  neighboring  peaks.  They  are  apt  to  con- 
tain mica  and  feldspar  ground  out  of  the  granite  rock  by 
the  glacier  that  made  their  basins.  Then  the  sunlight 


200   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

falling  on  these  rock  particles  gives  them  the  color  of  jade 
or  Nile  green,  or  dark  green  like  a  peacock's  tail.  They 
are  constantly  changing  color  with  the  changing  angles 
of  the  light  from  morning  until  sunset;  and  under  the 
passing  clouds  and  the  rippling  of  the  winds.  The  deeper 
lakes  are  dark  blue  in  the  deepest  parts,  turning  to  green 
in  the  shallow  waters  near  shore  where  the  yellow  of  the 
sun  rays  and  the  sand  mixes  most  with  the  blue  of  the 
waters.1 

THE  MYSTERY  IS   IN  THE   SECRET  PASSAGE 

In  Florida  there  are  sister  lakes  so  sympathetic  that 
their  waters  rise  and  fall  together.  One  responds  to  the 
mood  of  the  other  as  promptly  as  your  right  eye  waters 
in  sympathy  when  you  get  a  grain  of  dust  in  the  left.  The 
reason  for  this  goes  back  to  the  days  when  the  corals  helped 
build  Florida.  They  did  this  by  leaving  their  "bones" 
on  the  coral  reefs  when  that  part  of  North  America  was  in 
the  making.  These  remains  formed  limestone.  Then, 
in  this  limestone,  "sink  holes"  were  formed  on  the  surface 
leading  to  underground  passages,  just  as  they  do  over  the 
land  surface  in  the  cave  regions  of  Kentucky.  These  sink 
holes  often  fill  with  water  and  form  little  lakes.  These 
lakes,  being  connected  by  the  underground  passages,  rise 
and  fall  together.  It  looks  very  strange,  even  when  you 
know  the  secret  of  it;  and  still  stranger  when  you  don't. 

Yet  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  a  bright  boy  or  girl  seeing 
two  lakes  rising  or  falling  together  would  suspect  the  under- 
ground connection;  for,  of  course,  we  all  know  about  springs 
and  their  underground  channels.  But  what  would  you 
say  to  this: 

Wan  Dyke:  "The  Mountain." 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES  201 

A  lake  that,  a  moment  before,  was  as  smooth  as  glass 
suddenly  begins  to  shiver  all  over  as  one  shivers  in  a  sudden 
draught.  But  there  is  no  breeze  stirring !  A  moment  later 
the  water  rises  and  falls  along  the  banks;  an  inch,  two 
inches,  a  foot,  two  feet.  Then,  in  the  course  of  a  couple 
of  hours,  the  sky,  which  before  was  without  a  cloud,  begins 
to  grow  black  and  there  follows  a  terrific  storm. 

A  KIND   OF  NATURAL  BAROMETER 

The  cause  of  the  rising  of  the  water  is  the  heavier  pres- 
sure of  the  air  at  the  farther  end  of  the  lake,  the  region 
of  the  coming  storm.  The  water,  being  forced  down  at 
one  end  of  the  basin,  you  see,  rises  at  the  other.  Then 
as  the  storm  advances  toward  you  the  pressure  is  released 
and  the  water  falls  again;  but  for  a  while  it  rocks  to  and 
fro  as  water  will  do  in  a  basin  if  you  tip  it  up  at  one  end 
and  then  let  it  down  again. 

THE   TIDES   IN  A   TEACUP 

But,  besides  these  imitation  tides  made  by  the  unequal 
pressure  of  the  wind,  lakes  have  real  tides  just  as  the  ocean 
does;  and  from  the  same  cause,  the  attraction  of  the 
moon.  In  fact,  there  are  tides  in  a  teacup,  and  the  tea 
rises  toward  the  passing  moon  as  does  everything  liquid 
on  the  face  of  the  earth.  In  the  teacup  the  rise  is  so  small 
you  can't  see  it  as  you  do  when  the  great  mass  of  the 
ocean  waters  is  moved  in  the  same  way.  Even  in  the  Great 
Lakes  the  tide  only  amounts  to  three  inches  or  so. 

And,  in  addition  to  their  tides,  there  are  many  other 
things  about  lakes  that  have  led  the  largest  of  them  to 
be  referred  to  as  "inland  seas."    Says  Reclus:1 
1I(The  Earth." 


202   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

"Lakes  are  indeed  seas.  They  have  their  tempests, 
their  swells,  their  breakers.  It  is  true  the  waves  are  neither 
so  high  nor  move  so  rapidly  as  those  of  the  sea  because 
they  do  not  move  over  such  great  depths.  They  are  short, 
compact  and  choppy,  but  for  this  very  reason  they  are 
more  formidable.  And  the  water  being  fresh  and  there- 
fore lighter  than  that  of  the  ocean  is  more  readily  agitated. 
The  wind  has  scarcely  begun  to  stir  when  the  surface  is 
covered  with  foaming  billows." 

Not  only  are  lake  storms  especially  dangerous  for  the 
reasons  just  given  by  the  great  French  geographer  but 
lakes  in  mountain  regions  are  subject  to  an  additional 
danger;  for  their  storms  are  most  apt  to  come  at  night, 
just  as  described  in  the  story  of  the  storm  on  Galilee  in 
the  New  Testament.  You  remember  it  says  the  storm 
came  "down."  l 

"Now  it  came  to  pass  on  a  certain  day  that  Jesus  went 
into  a  ship  with  his  disciples;  and  he  said  unto  them,  Let 
us  go  over  unto  the  other  side  of  the  lake.  And  they 
launched  forth. 

"But  as  they  sailed  he  fell  asleep:  and  there  came  down 
a  storm  of  wind  on  the  lake;  and  they  were  filled  with 
water  and  were  in  jeopardy." 

Macgregor,  in  his  "Rob  Roy  on  the  Jordan,"  draws  the 
following  vivid  picture  of  his  own  struggles  with  one  of 
these  tempests: 

HOW   THE   STORM   CAME   DOWN   ON   GALILEE 

"just  as  the  Rob. Roy  passed  below  Wady  Fik  a  strange, 
distant  hissing  sounded  ahead  where  we  could  see  a  violent 
1  Luke  8:23. 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES  203 


ON  THE  BORDERS  OF  THE  SEA  OF  GALILEE 

You  can  see  this  is  in  a  desert,  mountainous  country,  and,  from  the  dress  of  the 
man,  that  it  is  in  the  Orient.  The  beach  is  wide — for  so  small  a  lake — because  of 
those  frequent  and  severe  storms  that  drive  the  waves,  loaded  with  sand  and 
pebbles,  far  back  from  the  shore. 

storm  was  raging.  The  waves  had  not  time  to  rise.  The 
gusts  had  come  down  on  calm  water  and  they  whisked  long 
wreaths  of  it  up  into  the  sky.  This  torrent  of  heavy,  cold 
air  was  pouring  over  the  mountain  crests  into  the  deep 
caldron  of  the  lake  below.  Just  as  it  says  in  Luke  8:23. 
'There  came  down  a  storm  upon  the  lake.'  " 

This  peculiarity  of  squalls  among  mountains  is  known 
to  all  who  have  boated  much  on  lakes,  but  on  the  Sea  of 
Galilee  the  wind  has  a  singular  force  and  suddenness.  This 
is  no  doubt  because  the  sea  is  so  deep  in  the  world  that  the 
sun  rarefies  the  air  in  it  enormously  and  the  wind,  speeding 
swiftly  over  a  long  and  level  plateau,  suddenly  comes  upon 
this  huge  gap  in  the  way  and  tumbles  down  into  it. 


204      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

III.    How  LAKES  GROW  OLD  AND  PASS  AWAY 

But,  however  formed,  lakes,  of  all  the  features  of  our 
landscape,  are  the  soonest  to  pass  away.  Because  of  the 
sediment  brought  into  them  by  the  rivers  they  keep  getting 
more  and  more  shallow  and  at  last,  in  the  course  of  time, 
are  quite  filled  up.  The  waves  of  the  lakes  themselves 
help  to  bring  this  about  by  cutting  material  from  their 
shores  and  washing  it  into  the  water. 

So  the  time  will  come  when  all  lakes  now  in  existence 
will  have  passed  away.  But  the  people  of  those  times  will 
not  be  without  their  lakes.  New  lakes  will  probably  be 
made  by  the  same  causes  which  produced  the  lakes  of  to- 
day; for  Nature's  great  processes  do  not  change. 

WHY    LILIES   COME   TO   THE   DYING   LAKES 

Meanwhile  how  beautifully  they  pass,  these  lakes;  par- 
ticularly the  little  lakes  like  that  in  Rousseau's  painting. 
First,  on  the  margin  of  a  dying  lake  the  lilies  gather.  Lilies 
grow  only  in  quiet  waters  and  these  they  find  in  the  shallow 
margins  of  lakes  that  are  filling  up. 

LAST  OF  ALL  COME  THE  TREES 

Next  after  the  lilies  come  the  sedges,  grasslike  herbs 
that  grow  in  marshy  places.  And  after  they  are  well 
established  they  get  things  ready  for  the  next  arrivals ;  for 
these  plants  come  in  a  regular  procession.  The  dense  tufts 
of  the  sedges  make  mats  on  which  soil  gathers.  In  this  soil 
shrubs  begin  to  grow.  From  the  decay  of  all  this  vege- 
tation more  soil  is  formed  in  which  the  seeds  of  spruce  and 
tamarack  spring  up.  Then  come  willows,  then  poplars 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES 


205 


and  maples,  and  last  of  all  the  oaks  and  nut-bearing  trees, 
which  march  into  new  lands  slowly  because  they  must 
depend  on  their  heavy  seeds  to  move  them  forward,  while 


From  the  painting  by  Rousseau 

HOW  LAKES  GROW  OLD  AND  PASS  AWAY 

This  picture,  called  "The  Lake,"  is  from  a  painting  by  Rousseau,  a  great  French 
landscape  artist,  and  illustrates  the  beautiful  way  in  which  lakes  grow  old,  as  de- 
scribed in  the  text.  Already,  as  you  see,  Father  Oak  and  his  family  have  arrived. 


the  little  seeds  of  maple,  willow,  poplar,  and  pine  are  easily 
carried  by  the  wind. 

But  while  fresh-water  lakes  and  their  surroundings  are 
so  beautiful  and  poetic,  and  never  more  so  than  when  the 
lakes  are  passing  away,  there  are  dying  lakes,  whose  sur- 
roundings are  the  very  pictures  of  desolation.  These  are 
the  lakes  which  have  become  bitter  with  salt  because  their 
waters  are  evaporated  by  the  sun  faster  than  fresh  water 
comes  in.  The  most  famous  of  these  salt  lakes  is  the 


206      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Dead  Sea  of  the  Holy  Land,  into  which  the  Jordan  flows. 
Lying  in  a  rock-bound  pit,  in  the  deepest  part  of  a  vast 
trench,  it  is  like  a  caldron  into  which  for  eight  months  of 
every  year  is  poured  the  heat  from  a  burning  sun  in  a 
cloudless  sky.  Although  Palestine,  as  you  can  see  by  the 
map,  is  in  the  temperate  zone,  the  thermometer  here  often 
registers  130  degrees,  because  cooling  breezes  never  come 
down  into  this  pit  except  in  those  occasional  storms  due 
to  the  sudden  rush  of  cooler  and  therefore  heavier  air  from 
the  surrounding  heights. 

THIS   IS   HOW   THE   DEAD   SEA  DIED 

As  shown  by  the  wave-cut  terraces  on  the  surrounding 
rocks  this  lake  was  once  a  part  of  a  great  body  of  water 
that  extended  clear  from  Mount  Hermon  to  the  Red 
Sea.  Then,  by  a  series  of  heaving  movements,  widely 
separated  in  time  (as  shown  by  the  depth  of  the  beach  ter- 
races) the  bottom  of  this  greater  sea  was  uplifted  into  the 
two  parallel  chains  of  limestone  mountains  which  flank 
the  Jordan  Valley.  At  the  same  time  a  great  block  of 
earth  crust  between  them  settled  down,  step  by  step,  and 
made  the  long  trench  running  clear  to  Africa,  one  end  of 
which  is  the  Jordan  Valley,  in  which  the  Dead  Sea  lies. 

Later,  during  the  different  Ice  Ages,  as  it  is  supposed, 
there  was  plenty  of  moisture,  for  the  rock  records  show 
that  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and  what  is  now  the  Dead  Sea  were 
once  parts  of  the  same  body  of  water.  Then  the  climate 
gradually  changed,  the  land  went  dry,  and  the  Dead  Sea 
water  became  far  saltier  than  that  of  the  ocean — so  salty 
that  all  life  died  out  of  it.  To-day  the  water  tastes  like  a 
mixture  of  epsom  salts  and  quinine,  and  any  unfortunate 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES 


207 


THE  DEAD  SEA 


fish  swept  into  it  by  the  fresh  waters  of  the  Jordan,  in 
which  fish  are  abundant,  gives  a  few  desperate  gasps  and 
dies. 

While  it  is  not  true,  as  the  ancients  believed,  that  birds 
drop  dead  in  flying  over  it,  neither  birds  nor  beasts  make 
their  homes  in  the  choking  pit;  and  on  its  shores,  always 
gray  with  a  mixture  of  mud  and  salt,  of  course  no  green 
thing  can  grow.  Indeed,  there  is  little  plant  life  anywhere 

I«Tel  of  Mediterranean 


HOW  THE  DEAD  SEA  DIED 


208   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

round  about,  but  as  if  in  mockery  there  grow  nearby  what 
are  known  as  apples  of  Sodom  or  Dead  Sea  fruit.  This 
fruit  looks  like  an  orange,  but  it  is  bitter  to  the  taste  and 
filled  only  with  fibre  and  dust. 

The  official  report  of  Lieutenant  Lynch,  of  the  United 
States  Navy,  who  headed  an  expedition  sent  out  by  the 
government  to  explore  the  Dead  Sea  and  the  surrounding 
regions,  is  full  of  word  pictures  which  might  well  have  sup- 
plied material  for  the  imagination  of  Dante. 

LIKE   A   VAT   OF   MOLTEN   METAL 

The  sea,  yellow  from  the  large  amount  of  phosphorus 
in  the  water,  is  overhung  in  the  early  morning  by  a  dense 
mist.  This  mist  is  made  by  the  water  steaming  in  the 
intense  heat.  It  looks,  however,  like  smoke  above  a  great 
vat  of  molten  metal  "fused  but  motionless."  After  dark, 
when  the  night  winds  come  down  from  the  heights  and  go 
moaning  through  the  gorges,  the  scene  changes. 

"The  surface  becomes  one  wide  sheet  of  phosphorescent 
foam,  and  the  waves,  as  they  break  on  the  shore,  throw  a 
sepulchral  light  on  the  white  skeletons  of  dead  trees  which 
have  been  washed  from  the  woody  banks  of  the  Jordan 
and,  lying  half  buried  in  the  sand,  are  coated  with  gray 
salt  from  the  muddy  spray." 

On  a  portion  of  the  land  now  covered  by  the  lake, 
according  to  tradition,  were  the  wicked  cities  of  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah,  and  after  their  destruction  these  bitter 
waters  flowed  in  and  forever  buried  the  scene  of  their 
wickedness  from  the  sight  of  men.  , 

It  seems  probable  that  the  region  did  once  support  a 
larger  population.  We  know  this  to  be  true  of  other  parts 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES  209 

of  the  Orient  which  have  since  become  desolate  owing  to 
the  ravages  of  war,  the  change  of  climate,  and  the  decay 
of  Oriental  civilization.  And  when  we  recall  how  the 
sinking  of  the  great  earth  block  that  carried  this  land  so  far 
below  the  level  of  the  sea  forced  lava  up  through  the  earth 
cracks,  we  can  account  for  "the  fire  from  heaven"  that 
poured  down  upon  the  cities  of  the  plain. 

Professor  Huntington,  who  headed  the  Yale  Expedition 
into  Palestine  in  1909,  speaks  of  visiting  the  ruins  of 
Suweim  south  of  the  Dead  Sea  and  picking  up  bits  of  lava 
(the  whole  region  abounds  in  evidences  of  volcanic  action) 
while  the  sheik  who  acted  as  guide  told  the  story  of  Sodom 
as  the  story  of  Suweim.  The  name  Suweim,  Professor 
Huntington  thinks,  may  be  a  corruption  of  Sodom.  Con- 
tinuing, he  says:1 

"The  place  is  much  greener  than  the  other  side  of  the 
valley,  and  in  the  days  of  Lot  may  have  been  'like  the 
garden  of  Jehovah'2;  for  in  those  times,  as  our  studies  of 
old  levels  of  the  Dead  Sea  quite  clearly  indicate,  the  cli- 
mate of  Palestine  was  probably  decidedly  moister  than  it 
is  now. 

"And  not  two  miles  from  Suweim  we  found  a  little  vol- 
cano of  very  recent  date  geologically,  and  an  eruption 
may  have  wrought  havoc  in  a  town  located  near  Suweim." 

In  one  part  of  the  valley  he  also  found  a  cave  among 
the  mountains,  hewn  out  of  the  limestone  above  a  spring. 

Now  turn  to  your  Bible,  Genesis  9:  30: 

"And  Lot  went  up  out  of  Zoar  and  dwelt  in  the  moun- 
tain, in  a  cave,  he  and  his  two  daughters." 

1  "  Palestine  and  Its  Transformation." 

2  Genesis  13:  10. 


210   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

In  short,  the  geography  of  the  region — such  is  the  con- 
clusion of  Professor  Huntington's  careful  study — "  sup- 
plies all  the  elements  of  the  story  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah 
in  exactly  the  location  where  the  Biblical  account  would 
lead  one  to  expect  them." 

But  the  native  Arab  goes  further.  Not  far  from  the 
borders  of  the  Dead  Sea  is  a  mountain  of  salt  called  Jebel 
Usdem,  which  "the  early  and  later  rains"  in  the  course  of 
ages  have  dissolved  into  many  fantastic  shapes.  Among 
these  strange  figures  is  a  pillar  tapering  toward  the  top, 
on  which  is  a  wide  cap  of  stone,  such  as  that  shown  on  page 
60  and  such  as  are  often  seen  on  detached  and  pillared 
rocks. 

But  this  gaunt  remnant  of  grisly  gray,  although  it  is  still 
obviously  a  part  of  the  mountain  and  cannot  be  less  than 
forty  feet  high,  your  Arab  friend  insists  was  once  the  wife 
of  Lot ! 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

If  you  were  hunting  for  mountain  lakes  where  would  you  expect 
to  find  the  most,  in  high  mountains  or  in  low? 

Rivers  sometimes  make  lakes  by  using  the  same  stuff  the  small 
boys  do,  just  plain  mud.  Look  at  Lake  Pontchartrain  in  the 
map  of  Louisiana  and  you  can  see  one  of  the  ways  in  which  this 
is  done.  Remember  that  all  the  land  around  this  lake  is  part  of 
the  delta  of  the  Mississippi.  The  river  deposits  have  simply 
enclosed  a  portion  of  the  shallow  sea. 

Or — this  is  another  way  in  which  rivers  make  lakes  by  building 
mud  walls — a  river  emptying  at  right  angles  into  a  narrow  gulf 
may  build  a  dam  clear  across  it.  The  rich  Imperial  Valley  of 
southern  California  was  cut  off  from  the  Gulf  of  California  in  this 
way.  Look  at  the  map  and  you  can  see  just  how  this  was  done. 

One  of  the  puzzles  about  mountain  lakes  is  how  frogs  got  into 
them.  The  frogs  never  climbed  up  there,  you  may  be  sure.  Muir 


IN  THE  LANDS  OF  THE  LAKES  211 

thinks  maybe  the  ducks  did  it.  How  do  you  suppose?  See  if 
you  can  imagine  and  then  see  what  Muir  says  about  it.1 

In  connection  with  what  was  said  about  lakes  playing  they  are 
oceans — not  these  little  mountain  lakes,  of  course,  but  great  big 
lakes — you  will  be  interested  in  what  Lord  Bryce  says  in  his 
"Travels  in  South  America"  about  why  lakes  may  even  look 
larger  than  the  ocean. 

In  the  Britannica  and  other  books  that  you  may  not  yet  be  old 
enough  to  read  you  will  find  many  more  curious  things  about 
lakes.  I  can't  tell  which  one  of  my  readers  you  are,  you  see,  but 
if  you  belong  to  the  "younger  set,"  father,  mother,  or  some  other 
member  of  the  family  can  do  the  looking  up  and  then  tell  you 
about  it.2  In  the  Britannica  will  be  found  such  interesting  things 
as  this: 

How  certain  kinds  of  mountains  and  lakes  are  made  at  one  and 
the  same  time — by  the  same  movement. 

How  even  the  wind  may  make  lakes. 

Why  lakes  are  to  the  land  what  lands  are  to  the  sea. 

Then  if  you  will  turn  to  page  75  of  that  fascinating  little  book 
we  have  already  dipped  into  several  times3  you  will  find  what  the 
fact  that  lakes  are  to  the  land  what  islands  are  to  the  sea  has  to 
do  with  a  peculiar  beetle  in  the  Shetland  Islands  (where  the  ponies 
come  from)  and  the  famous  tailless  cat  of  the  Isle  of  Man. 

One  of  the  quaintest  little  bits  of  real  life  in  Lakeland  is  how  the 
baby  gulls  of  the  Great  Lakes  worry  their  papas  and  mamas  by 
going  swimming  before  they  are  old  enough;  how  their  parents 
give  them  a  spanking  and  send  them  back  home;  and  how  kind 
all  the  lady  gulls  are  to  the  little  gulls  of  neighbors  that  come  to 
their  houses  to  play  with  their  children.4 

1  "The  Mountains  of  California." 

2  I  don't  know  of  anything  that  is  more  fun,  of  an  evening,  than 
looking  up  things  in  an  encyclopaedia — except  looking  them  up  in  two 
encyclopaedias. 

3  "Colin  Clout's  Calendar." 

«  "The  Bird,  Our  Brother,"  by  Olive  Thorne  Miller. 


DROWNED   VALLEYS  ON  THE   MAINE   COAST 

Wherever  you  see  very  irregular  shores,  as  along  the  coast  of  Maine,  you  may 
infer  that  the  shores  have  sunk  so  that  the  waters  of  the  sea  came  up  into  the  river 
valleys,  and  the  hills  and  long  tongues  of  high  land  became  islands  and  peninsulas. 


CHAPTER  X 

(OCTOBER) 

To-night  the  winds  begin  to  rise 

And  roar  from  yonder  dropping  day; 
The  last  red  leaf  is  whirled  away, 

The  rooks  are  blown  about  the  skies. 

— Tennyson. 

THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  AND  THE  ROCK  MILLS  OF 
THE  SEA 

Nothing  looks  more  aimless,  more  unorganized,  perhaps, 
than  the  long  turmoil  of  the  waves  of  the  sea  which  begins 
in  late  autumn  and  continues  through  the  winter  months. 
If,  with  your  nose  well  over  the  edge  of  a  cliff,  you  look 
straight  down,  you  will  see  something  like  this:  With 
every  forward  leap  of  the  surges  the  waters  are  divided 
and  entangled  among  the  rocks,  and  division  after  division 
is  beaten  back  by  the  upright  wall  in  front  and  the  broken 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  213 

blocks  of  stone  on  this  side  and  on  that.  On-coming  waves, 
met  by  those  recoiling,  rise  into  mountainous,  struggling 
masses  of  wild  fury.  The  whole  affair  seems  to  be  as  clear 
a  case  of  wasted  energy  as  a  Mexican  revolution. 

But  if  you  watch  the  waves  carefully  and  study  them  a 
little  you  will  see  underlying  and  controlling  this  apparent 
anarchy  the  wonderful  engineering  by  which  the  machinery 
of  the  sea  works  out  its  appointed  tasks.  It  is  when  the 
earth  has  gathered  its  harvests  and  laid  down  to  its  winter 
rest  that  the  sea  begins  gathering  harvests  of  its  own, 
grinding  up  the  rocks  for  food  for  the  plants  in  its  gar- 
dens, for  new  clothes  for  its  shell-fish,  and  new  soil  for 
earth  harvests  in  millenniums  yet  to  be. 

I.     THE  DESTROYER 

On  the  face  of  it  the  case  looks  bad.  The  sea's  chief 
business  seems  to  be  that  of  eating  us  Up,  or  at  least  the 
lands  on  which  we  live.  And  this  idea  of  it  we  find  run- 
ning through  all  literature  and  art.  A  very  large  number 
of  the  pictures  of  the  sea,  probably  the  majority,  show  it 
in  wind  and  storm.  And  this  is  still  more  true  of  the 
famous  sea  pictures  of  literature.  Shakespere,  for  exam- 
ple, makes  some  three  hundred  references  to  the  sea,  and 
nearly  always,  where  he  gives  it  a  character,  it  is  that  of 
a  monster,  always  hungry  and  never  satisfied,  a  "wild, 
rude  sea,"  a  sea  "raging  like  an  angry  boar" — and  so 
back  to  Homer  and  forward  to  Kipling. 

That  the  sea  is  constantly  eating  away  the  land  cannot 
be  denied,  and  to  an  extent  that  is  delightfully  alarming  if, 
as  did  the  little  boy  listening  to  the  tale  of  the  giants,  we 
"like  to  be  made  nervous."  It  is  said  that  England  still 


214      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

rules  the  waves,  but  where  she  fronts  the  sea  on  the  east 
the  coast  is  being  cut  back  at  the  rate  of  two  to  four  yards 
a  year,  in  spite  of  all  that  modern  engineering  skill  can  do. 
In  the  course  of  a  thousand  years  the  losses  on  all  fronts 
have  amounted  to  over  500  square  miles.  Each  year  car- 


Courlesy  of"  The  Scientific  American" 

SEA-CLIFFS  IN  THE   SCHOOLROOM 

These  dizzy  cliffs  and  the  wide  sea  beyond  were  made  in  the  schoolroom  in  the 
same  way  that  the  glacier  and  the  iceberg  were  made  in  Chapter  II. 

ries  off  1,500  acres  more  from  the  king's  domains,  to  add 
them  to  the  Empire  of  the  Sea,  "and  he  calls  to  us  still 
unfed."  On  the  east  coast  the  blows  dealt  by  the  waves 
in  severe  storms  are  such  that  the  land  trembles  for  a  mile 
back  from  the  shore.  "The  earth,"  said  Emerson,1  speak- 
ing of  the  industrial  greatness  of  England,  "shakes  under 
1  "English  Traits." 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  215 

the  thunder  of  its  mills."     So  for  ages  it  has  shaken  under 
the  thunder  of  the  mills  of  the  sea. 

This  apparent  war  of  the  sea  upon  the  land  is  a  war  of 
machinery  whose  workings  are  curiously  like  the  ancient 
war  machinery  of  men.  Without  tools  the  sea  is  almost 


Courtesy  of  "  The  Scientific  American" 

BEHIND   THE   SCENES 

as  helpless  as  man  himself;  and,  as  in  man's  history,  its 
use  of  tools  begins  with  the  Stone  Age.  Where  there  is 
no  stone-strewn  beach  or  underwater  shelf  extending  out 
from  a  cliff,  the  waves  do  little  damage.  They  give  only 
a  muffled  and  (to  the  poetic  ear),  a  baffled  roar.  But  a 
sloping  shelf  along  a  rocky  shore  not  only  makes  a  kind 
of  scaling  ladder  on  which  the  waves  can  climb  to  great 
heights,  but  these  waves  are  pitched  forward  with  terrific 


2i6   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

force  as  they  reach  it  from  the  open  sea.  As  they  come 
on  they  seize  huge  stones  which  they  hurl  against  the  cliffs. 
Even  amid  the  wild  voices  of  tempests  one  hears  the  boul- 
ders crashing  against  the  walls.  In  storms  of  sufficient 
energy  rocks  of  three  tons  weight  are  driven  forward  like 
pebbles.  The  action  against  the  upper  part  of  a  cliff  may 
be  compared  to  that  of  one  of  those  great  stone-throwing 
engines  of  the  Romans,  while  on  the  lower  portion  the 
drive  suggests  the  battering-ram. 

WHAT   NEPTUNE    KNOWS   ABOUT   WEDGES   AND 
PNEUMATIC   TOOLS 

Where  the  waves  strike  into  narrowing  crevices  in  the 
rocks  they  act  as  wedges,  prying  the  walls  apart.  In  this 
form  of  the  sea's  destructive  work  we  find  also  an  applica- 
tion of  a  motive  power  which  has  come  to  play  so  important 
a  part  in  modern  engineering;  namely,  compressed  air. 
Waves  strong  enough  to  handle  big  rocks  not  only  dash 
them  against  the  cliff,  while  the  waves  themselves  drive 
into  the  crevices  like  wedges,  but  in  so  doing  they  force 
air  into  the  crevices  and  compress  it.  This  air,  expanding 
as  the  waves  fall  back,  forces  out  great  blocks  of  stone 
which,  in  turn,  are  also  used  as  weapons  of  assault. 

And,  as  we  look  back  in  the  history  of  the  sea,  we  find 
that  he  long  ago — the  deep-laid  schemer ! — planted  enemies 
within  our  very  walls.  Waves,  even  when  armed  with 
the  heaviest  missiles,  can  do  comparatively  little  damage 
to  walls  in  which  there  are  no  crevices.  But  there  are  few 
such  walls.  Usually  even  the  hardest  rocks  have  running 
through  them  those  cracks  which  the  geologists  (with  a 
fine  sense  of  humor)  call  "joints";  or  they  have  "bedding 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  217 

planes,"  the  divisions  between  the  rock  beds.  Both  of 
these  weaknesses  in  our  defensive  walls  are,  in  a  large  de- 
gree, the  handiwork  of  the  sea;  the  bedding  planes  because 
rocks  are  so  laid  .in  the  sea  mills,  and  the  joints  because 
the  wrinkling  up  and  consequent  cracking  of  the  land  rocks 
is  the  other  end,  as  we  learned  in  Chapter  I,  of  the  down- 
wrinkling  of  the  rocks  under  the  weight  of  the  sea. 

In  the  very  body  of  the  rocks  also  is  hidden  a  secret 
enemy;  the  salt  left  when  they  were  made.  And  more 
salt  is  constantly  being  forced  into  the  surface  pores  as 
the  waves  strike.  This  salt  helps  to  dissolve  and  weaken 
the  rock  under  the  chemical  action  of  the  air,  and  the  rains 
and  the  mechanical  expansion  and  contraction  of  the  sur- 
face with  changes  of  temperature. 

PLANING   MILLS   OF   THE   WINTER   SEA 

All  the  Great  Powers  of  nature,  "on  land,  on  sea,  and 
in  the  air,"  seem  to  be  in  open  conspiracy  against  our  peace. 
The  evidence  seems  especially  plain  in  late  fall  and  winter, 
when  the  sea,  contrary  to  the  usual  practice  in  war,  carries 
on  its  most  vigorous  campaigns.  Then  come  the  winds 
for  the  great  drives;  then  come  the  frosts  that  change 
the  water  wedges  into  expanding  blocks  of  ice  that,  almost 
with  the  force  of  exploding  shells,  tear  the  walls  apart. 
In  winter  are  formed  the  great  ice-fields  that  help  in  two 
ingenious  ways  to  further  the  destructive  action  of  the 
storm  waves.  In  bays  and  smaller  recesses  in  rocky  shores, 
the  ice  has  embedded  in  it  fragments  of  stone  which  the 
sea  has  battered  down.  The  constant  plunge  of  the  waves 
breaks  up  these  ice-fields  into  sections  which,  with  the 
embedded  stones,  become  rude  planing  mills.  Where  a 


218      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

headland  is  sloping,  these  planers,  driven  back  and  forth  by 
the  waves,  chisel  the  rock  away  as  a  planer  chisels  down 
a  piece  of  steel  upon  which  it  has  been  set  to  work. 

HOW    STONES   ARE   CARRIED   OUT   TO    SEA 

A  no  less  curious  feature  of  sea  engineering  is  the  use 
of  ice-fields  as  "conveyors."  During  the  spring,  summer, 
and  autumn  the  masses  of  stone  which  the  sea  brings  down 
from  the  cliffs  on  its  occasional  busy  days — that  is  to  say 
on  days  when  the  winds  are  high — pile  up  and  so  form  a 
kind  of  bulwark  against  further  attacks.  But  when  in 
winter  these  stones  become  embedded  as  above  described, 
strong  offshore  winds  carry  the  ice-fields,  stones  and  all, 
out  to  sea.  Then,  on  shore,  wind  and  wave  take  up  their 
work  again  unchecked.  All  along  the  rocky  shores  of  the 
Atlantic,  as  far  south  as  New  York  State,  beyond  which 
no  rock  walls  come  down  to  the  shore,  all  these  interesting 
things  may  be  seen  by  the  traveller. 

Another  phase  of  this  team-work  of  natural  forces  in 
feeding  the  land  to  the  sea  is  that  steady  advance  of  the 
waters  upon  certain  shores.  As  if  science  herself  had 
joined  literature  and  art  in  giving  the  old  sea  dog  a  bad 
name,  these  advances  are  called  in  the  language  of  geol- 
ogy, "transgressions  of  the  sea."  These  transgressions 
are  caused  in  part  by  the  gradual  sinking  of  the  land  and 
in  part  by  the  rising  of  the  waters.  It  is  not  possible 
always  to  tell  which  agency  is  at  work.  Often  both  may 
be.  One  thing  about  the  rising  of  the  waters  themselves 
might  be  looked  at  as  particularly  alarming.  The  rivers, 
which,  of  course,  are  parts  of  one  great  water  system,  whose 
centre  and  prime  mover  is  the  sea,  are  not  only  constantly 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  219 

wearing  the  land  down  toward  sea  level  but  raising  the 
sea  level  by  the  inpour  of  vast  quantities  of  ground-up 
land.  Even  as  matters  stand,  the  amount  of  water  in  the 
sea  bowls  is  so  great  that  if  all  lands  were  at  the  present 
sea  level  they  would  be  covered  everywhere  to  a  depth 
of  two  miles.  Wind-borne  dust  from  the  surface  of  the 
land  and  from  volcanic  explosions  also,  in  time,  amounts 
to  a  pretty  sum;  and,  of  course,  helps  makes  the  waters 
of  the  sea  rise  upon  the  land. 

WEARING  DOWN   THE   LAND   AND   FILLING  UP   THE   SEA 

Already  the  sea  has  advanced  a  thousand  feet  or  more 
upon  the  coasts  of  Maine,  to  take  one  instance;  and  the 
whole  ragged  outline  of  Europe  is  due  to  the  same  cause. 
Let  this  sort  of  thing  go  on  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  it  will 
only  be  a  question  of  a  few  millions  of  years  when  New 
York,  London,  and  other  centres  of  busy  life  will  be  buried 
like  the  wicked  cities  of  the  plain. 

And  if,  to  help  complete  this  picture  of  desolation,  we 
for  a  moment  forget  what  we  learned  about  the  life  insur- 
ance carried  by  the  continents,  we  can  imagine  how  they 
too  will  disappear.  And  the  Last  Man  thus: 

For  now  I  stand  as  one  upon  a  rock 
Knvironed  with  a  wilderness  of  sea, 
Who  marks  the  waxing  tide  grow  wave  by  wave 
Expecting  ever  when  some  envious  surge, 
Will,  in  his  brinish  bowels,  swallow  him.1 

To  make  the  thing  seem  doubly  sure,  let  us  reflect  with 
Mr.  Burroughs  that  the  world  is  now  probably  in  a  time 
of  spring,  following  the  latest  of  the  Ice  Ages.    If  so,  the 
1Shakespere:  "Titus  Andronicus." 


220      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

water  now  locked  up  in  snow-fields  and  glaciers  among 
the  mountain  peaks  will,  before  this  summer  of  the  cen- 
turies is  over,  all  melt  back  into  the  sea.  This  alone  will 
be  good  for  a  rise  of  some  thirty  feet  in  sea  level. 

Then,  still  later,  we  shall  no  doubt  have  another  Ice 
Age,  and  the  only  thing  that  may  save  us  from  being 
frozen  to  death  is  the  fact  that  we  have  previously  been 
drowned ! 

II.    THE  BUILDER 

But  it's  all  a  bad  dream;  a  delusion  of  the  mind,  and 
of  the  eye.  We  see  these  things — the  destruction  of  the 
land,  the  invasions  of  the  sea — but  we  do  not  see  them 
as  they  are  because  we  do  not  see  far  enough.  Looked  at 
broadly,  and  reading  the  story  of  it  to  the  end,  we  learn 
that  the  whole  relation  of  the  sea  to  the  land  and  its  life 
and  beauty  is  that  of  a  builder  and  fatherly  provider.  Far 
from  being  the  savage  creature  he  has  been  pictured,  Father 
Neptune  seems  to  have  the  kindly  disposition  of  old  King 
Cole  combined  with  the  wisdom  of  King  Solomon.  Every- 
where is  evidence  not  only  of  the  highest  intelligence  but 
of  good  will  toward  man  and  his  brother  tenants  of  the 
waters,  fields,  and  woods. 

THE   TRUTH  ABOUT   THE    SEA   IS   THIS 

To  begin  with  you  remember  it  was  the  sea  that  helped 
put  the  world  on  the  map.  Of  course,  if  we  had  not 
already  learned  in  the  story  of  how  the  continents  came 
up  out  of  the  sea,  that  there  is  no  cause  for  alarm,  we  might 
imagine  that  having  been  lifted  up  they  might,  by  a  reversal 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  221 

of  the  process,  be  lifted  down  again.  Indeed,  I  find  a  writer 
in  a  popular  periodical  dealing  in  science  stating  that  "every 
part  of  the  sea  floor  becomes,  in  its  turn,  the  shore  line 
and  is  subjected  to  the  wear  of  the  waves."  But,  as  a 


HARBOR  ENGINEERING  OF  THE  RIVERS  AND  THE    SEA 

In  the  mouths  of  certain  rivers  emptying  into  the  sea  the  tides  come  rushing  up 
in  a  roaring  wave  like  this.  When  the  tide  goes  out  the  water  flows  back  again. 
This  back-and-forth  motion  helps  to  broaden  the  harbor  made  by  the  river's  mouth, 
as  in  the  case  of  New  York  Harbor,  which  is  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson.  Owing 
to  this  tidal  action  the  water  of  the  Hudson  backs  up  clear  to  Albany. 

matter  of  fact,  we  know  that  the  continents  have  finally 
got  their  land  legs;  that  for  ages  the  transgressions  of  the 
sea  have  been  mainly  confined  to  the  continental  margins; 
and  that  unless  the  earth's  shrunken  centre  should,  from 
some  unimaginable  cause,  swell  back  to  its  old  size,  it  is 
mechanically  impossible  for  the  entire  bottoms  of  the  vast 
reservoirs  of  the  sea  to  be  raised. 


222      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 


A  GOLDEN   GATE  FOR   FRISCO 

The  famous  Golden  Gate  of  San  Francisco  (so  called  because  of  the  golden  sun- 
sets shining  through),  and  its  splendid  harbor,  made  by  the  sinking  of  the  land. 
The  gate  was  originally  cut  by  the  waters  of  those  two  rivers  that  join  and  flow 
into  the  bay.  What  rivers  are  they? 


HOW    THE    SEA    HELPS    MAKE    GOOD    FARMS    AND    BIG    CITIES 

Moreover  the  rivers,  in  the  very  act  of  wearing  down 
the  land  and  with  it  filling  up  the  sea,  help  keep  the  land 
from  being  flooded,  as  it  would  be  if  something  were  not 
done.  For,  as  we  learned  in  the  story  of  why  the  moun- 
tains border  the  sea  the  sediment  poured  in  by  the  rivers 
helps  raise  the  mountains  and  the  land  along  the  sea 
border.  It  is  during  the  downward  movement  of  the  con- 
tinental margins  that  most  sediment  is  spread  from  the 
inpouring  rivers  because  the  dip  of  the  land  is  greater 
and  the  swifter  current  not  only  cuts  down  the  land  faster, 
but  carries  the  sediment  farther  out  from  shore.  Here 
the  new  rock  is  made  from  old  worn-out  soil,  and,  since 
these  new  rocks  when  brought  to  the  surface  will  in  time 
decay,  fresh  soil  is  thus  prepared  for  future  generations. 
More  immediate  benefits  of  this  sinking  of  shores  and  ad- 
vance of  waters  are  the  harbors  which  have  made  great 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS 


223 


cities  like  New  York  and  London,  on  or  near  the  seacoast. 
These  harbors  are  all  the  results  of  "transgressions,"  com- 
bined with  the  digging  action  of  wave  and  tide. 

TAKING  A  HINT  FROM  THE   SEA'S    SHORE   ENGINEERING 

But  the  sea  builds  shores  as  well  as  eats  them.  Its  chief 
work  in  this  line  is  the  widening  of  the  continental  shelf 
by  building  it  up  with  rock  made  of  the  sea's  own  grist 
from  its  shores,  and  the  sediment  poured  in  by  the  rivers. 
This  work  is  not  "delivered,"  so  to  speak,  for  millions  of 


Copyright  by  Underwood  fir  Underwood 
STONE  TERRACES  FOR  THE   GANNETS 

This  picture  shows  what  the  rising  of  the  land  and  the  architectural  engineering 
of  the  sea  did  for  the  gannets  on  the  coast  of  Canada. 


224   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

years,  when  the  sinking  shores  begin  to  rise  again,  but  the 
sea,  in  its  wave  work,  does  shore  building  of  another  kind 
that  shows  above  the  waters  in  the  generation  in  which 
it  is  done.  On  wide,  shallow  beaches,  storm  waves  break 


THE  DROWNED   RIVERS  THAT  HELPED   MAKE   ENGLAND   GREAT 

Her  fine  harbors  have  helped  to  make  England  the  great  commercial  nation  that 
she  is.  Notice  here  the  relation  of  her  largest  cities  to  the  bay-like  mouths  of  the 
drowned  rivers  and  to  the  drowned  valley  north  of  the  Isle  of  Wight. 


some  distance  from  the  shore,  and,  so  losing  their  force, 
drop  the  sediment  which  they  have  stirred  up,  after  carry- 
ing it  forward  only  a  little  way.  As  a  result  of  this  repeated 
dumping,  an  embankment  forms,  broadening  seaward  in 
the  middle  and  bending  shoreward  at  the  ends.  A  por- 
tion of  the  sea  itself  is  finally  cut  out  and  enclosed  by  this 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS 


HOW  THE   SEA  TAUGHT  SHORE  ENGINEERING  TO  MEN 
This  is  a  salt  marsh  at  mid-tide.     How  the  sea  itself  adds  such  regions  to  the 
dominion  of  the  land,  and  how  human  engineers,  taking  the  hint,  have  put  the  sea 
to  work,  you  will  learn  in  this  chapter. 

embankment,  thus  forming  a  lagoon.  Finally  this  lagoon 
is  filled  with  material,  washed  from  the  land  and  by  sedi- 
ment brought  in  from  the  sea  at  high  tide.  Human  en- 
gineers, taking  the  hint,  now  put  the  sea  to  work  on  similar 
undertakings  of  their  own.  An  embankment  is  built  en- 
closing an  area  of  the  sea;  then  the  tides  and  the  land 
wash  do  the  rest. 

The  sea  also  works  with  the  busy  little  corals  in  build- 
ing reefs  and  islands.  Corals  can  only  live  and  build  where 
the  water  is  kept  in  constant  and  vigorous  motion  by  cur- 
rent and  wave.  From  the  air  imprisoned  in  the  bubbles 
by  the  stirring  and  turmoil  of  the  waves  and  particularly 
from  the  air  in  the  white  foam  of  the  crests  these  little 
people  get  their  oxygen.  At  the  same  time  they  absorb 
out  of  the  water  the  food  on  which  they  grow.  The  sea 
not  only  feeds  these  little  wards  of  its  bounty  during  their 
busy  lives,  but  extends  their  usefulness  after  death,  either 
by  cementing  to  the  reef  the  coral,  ground  up  by  the  waves, 


226      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

or  in  storms  scattering  it  over  wide  areas,  to  be  made  later 
into  the  finest  of  limestone;  and  still  later  into  the  best  of 
soils. 

We  know  also  that  the  sea  makes  coal  as  well  as  stone 
in  its  rock  mills;  that  the  pressure  of  the  overlying  rock 


FATHER  NEPTUNE  FEEDING  THE  CORAL  PEOPLE 

See  that  line  of  breakers  just  below  the  horizon?  That  shows  where  Father 
Neptune  is  serving  the  little  coral  people  with  food  and  fresh  air,  as  explained  in 
the  text. 


was  in  large  part  the  source  of  the  heat  that  changed  the 
vegetation  of  the  swamps,  first  into  charcoal  and  then  into 
coal. 

The  subject  of  what  the  sea  has  done  and  is  doing  for 
us  is  almost  as  endless  as  the  seas  themselves;  and  no  doubt 
the  reason  the  sea  is  never  still  is  because  it  has  so  much 
to  do.  Nothing  in  earth's  animate  or  inanimate  nature 
exercises  an  influence  to  be  compared  in  importance  to 
that  of  the  sea,  not  only  upon  the  land,  but  upon  the  whole 
life  which  land  and  sea  support;  and  even  in  what  seem 
to  be  the  most  aimless  of  its  movements  it  in  reality  acts 
with  the  precision  of  a  machine. 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  227 

III.    THE  ARTIST 

And  in  the  making  of  the  rock  in  its  presses  under  the 
water,  as  well  as  in  the  grinding  which  takes  place  along 
the  shores,  the  sea  evidently  has  an  eye  to  beauty  as  well 
as  use.  As  originally  formed,  the  conglomerates  or  "pud- 
ding-stones" are  always  laid  nearest  the  shore  because 
there  the  retiring  waves  and  the  rivers  emptying  into  the 
sea  drop  the  heaviest  part  of  their  load,  including  the 
pebbles.  Next  is  dropped  the  sand  which  is  pressed  into 
sandstone  and  beyond  this  the  finest  particles  of  all,  the 
ground-up  soil,  which  becomes  slate  rock.  Still  beyond 
the  zone  of  slate  is  deposited  the  lime  from  the  shells  of 
sea  creatures  who  can  live  only  in  this  clearer  water,  away 
from  the  muddy  waters  nearer  the  shore.  These  deposits 
make  limestone.  The  result  of  this  natural  sorting  process 
is  that  all  the  four  kinds  of  sedimentary  rock  are  always 
laid  down  in  just  this  i,  2,  3,  4  order  and  no  other:  (i) 
pudding-stone;  (2)  sandstone;  (3)  slate;  (4)  limestone. 

Then,  as  a  result  of  the  transgressions  of  the  sea,  what 
was  once  a  region  of  conglomerate  may  be  later  found  far 
out  under  the  sea  and  there  is  thus  laid  down  over  the  con- 
glomerate beds,  strata  of  sandstone,  slate,  or  limestone, 
depending  on  how  far  the  sea  advances.  So  we  find  rocks 
with  all  sorts  of  neighbors  above  and  below;  limestone 
above  conglomerate,  conglomerate  above  slate.  These 
changes  take  place  over  vast  regions  and  from  the  original 
uniformity  in  the  arrangement  of  the  rocks  there  neces- 
sarily results  a  similar  uniformity  in  the  results  of  this 
"shuffling,"  and  no  matter  what  changes  may  be  made 
afterward  by  raising  them  up  into  shore  cliff  and  moun- 


228      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

tain  and  by  other  earth  movements,  and  by  the  endless 
reshaping  by  weather  and  wave,  there  still  remains  that 
underlying  harmony  which,  with  variety,  gives  to  rocky 
shores  their  picturesque  beauty. 

Harmony  and  variety  are  necessary  in  all  forms  of  art 
— pictures,  literature,  music — and  the  conditions  govern- 
ing harmony  and  variety  are  always  found  hand-in-hand 
in  the  art  work  of  the  sea  and  its  helpers.  The  difference 
in  texture  in  different  kinds  of  rock,  for  example,  and  in 
different  parts  of  the  same  rock,  cause  them  to  yield  in 
different  ways  and  degrees  to  the  action  of  wave,  wind 
and  weather;  so  there  is  sure  to  be  great  variety  in  the 
shapes  they  take  as  they  are  worn  away. 

HARMONY,   VARIETY,  AND   THE  ART  WORK   OF   THE   SEA 
FAMILY   LIKENESS   IN   ROCK   FORMS 

Yet,  with  all  their  differences,  the  shapes  rocks  take — 
sandstone  compared  with  granite,  for  example — are  so 
characteristic  that  one"  soon  learns  to  tell  a  long  way  off 
what  kind  of  rock  a  distant  landscape  is  made  of.  There 
is  inevitably  a  certain  type  resemblance,  since  all  sandstone 
is  of  the  same  general  texture  and  weathers  in  the  same 
way. 

NATURE'S  BUILDING  BLOCKS  AND  THE  SEA 

Then  take  the  natural  division  into  blocks  made  by 
joints  in  the  rocks  to  which  cliffs  like  the  famous  Castle 
Head  at  Bar  Harbor  owes  its  striking  form.  These  blocks 
are  so  nearly  true  that  you  feel  sure  they  must  have  been 
cut  by  stone-masons,  and  yet  they  have  the  variety  which 
art  demands;  they  have  not  the  monotonous  sameness  of 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  229 

shape  of  the  bricks  in  a  wall.  This  is  mainly  due  to  the 
differences  in  the  strains  which  cracked  the  original  rock 
mass.  So,  from  the  beginning  a  sea-wall  built  by  nature 
is  more  picturesque  than  a  sea-wall  built  by  man.  And 
it  goes  on  taking  more  and  more  picturesque  shapes  under 
the  hammers  of  the  waves.  For  the  force  of  the  waves, 
the  angles  at  which  they  strike,  the  size  and  shape  of  the 
rock  fragments  with  which  they  strike,  these  vary  in- 
finitely. 

ETCHING,   SCULPTURE,   AND   LANDSCAPE   GARDENING 

Equally  true  is  this  of  other  natural  forces  that  shape 
the  rocks;  such  as  the  daily  and  seasonal  changes  of  tem- 
perature that  chip  away  the  mountain  peaks  and  the  faces 
of  the  cliffs,  and  the  character  and  number  of  plants  that 
grow  on  rocks  where  they  can  get  a  foothold  and  dying 
and  decaying  generate  acids  which  help  to  etch  the  rocks 
away.  Trees  growing  on  rocks  search  out  the  cracks  with 
their  roots  and,  pushing  in  and  prying  them  apart,  help 
to  change  their  form.  And  there  is  sure  to  be  variety  in 
the  arrangement  of  the  wild  trees  growing  on  rocks  in  the 
mountains  and  by  the  sea,  since  the  seeds,  being  carried 
by  the  winds  or  by  running  water  or  by  birds  or  four-footed 
creatures,  fall  in  an  endless  variety  of  groupings.  So  of 
the  shadows  cast  by  the  trees.  These  shadow  masses,  so 
different  in  shape,  owing  in  part  to  the  irregular  arrange- 
ment of  the  trees  and  in  part  to  the  differences  in  shape 
of  the  trees  themselves,  protect  portions  of  the  rock,  to  a 
certain  extent,  against  changes  in  temperature,  while  the 
bare  rocks  are  fully  exposed  to  it,  so  there  results  a  cor- 
responding variety  in  the  result  of  the  sun's  work  upon 


230      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  rock.  At  the  same  time  they  help  on  the  acid  etching 
process,  because  in  these  shadowed  spots  there  is  more 
moisture  and  therefore  more  rapid  decay. 

The  form  of  whole  continents  follows  the  same  law. 
Take,  for  example,  Europe.  "The  geological  history  of 
Europe,"  says  Geikie,1  "is  largely  the  history  of  its 
mountain  chains";  and  the  mountain  chains,  for  all  their 
picturesque  variety,  have  also,  and  necessarily,  a  certain 
uniformity,  because  in  the  wrinkling  of  the  rocks  which 
made  them  the  vast  areas  over  which  they  now  extend 
were  all  subjected  to  the  same  force — a  big  push  from  one 
side  which  crumpled  up  the  earth's  outer  crust  as  a  table- 
cloth is  crumpled  up  when  pushed  forward  against  a  book 
lying  on  it. 

HOW   THE  VERY   SCENERY   PLAYS   MANY   PARTS 

The  ancient  history  written  in  the  rocks,  in  the  present 
relative  positions  of  the  strata,  shows  that  four  times  a 
great  mountain  system  has  thus  been  raised  across  the 
face  of  what  is  now  Europe;  that  three  times  large  portions 
of  these  mountain  ranges  have  been  sunk  under  the  sea 
and  new  rocks  deposited  over  them;  and  that  the  moun- 
tains of  to-day — the  Alps,  the  Carpathians,  and  the  rest — 
are  the  survivors  of  the  fourth  time  up.  Here  we  have 
another  striking  example  of  the  fact  that  on  the  great 
stage  of  life  the  very  scenery  has  its  exits  and  its  en- 
trances ! 

But  remember  that  in  all  these  changes  of  scenery — in 
the  crumplings  and  the  foldings,  and  new  rock  deposits 

1  Encyclopaedia  Britannica:  article  on  Geology. 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  231 

and  the  carving  by  the  rivers  and  the  frosts  and  the  winds 
and  the  waves  of  the  sea — we  have  certain  similar  ma- 
terials, similarly  arranged,  stretching  over  vast  areas,  and 
the  consequence  is  a  certain  uniformity  and  rhythm  in 
the  ups.and  downs  of  the  landscape  and  in  the  changes 
worked  in  the  walls  of  stone  "where  time  and  storm  have 
set  their  wild  signatures  upon  them." 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

What  would  you  think  of  seeing  the  leaves  all  out  and  the  trees 
in  bloom  on  Christmas  Day?  That  happens  right  along,  and  the 
people  who  live  in  the  lands  where  this  occurs  don't  think  any- 
thing of  it,  because  this  is  in  the  Southern  Hemisphere  during  the 
vacation  season  of  the  sea. 

One  peculiar  thing  about  this  spring  and  summer  in  the  winter 
time  in  Africa  is  that  when  the  leaves  first  come  out  they  are  not 
green  at  all.  They  are  brown,  red,  and  pink.  Later  on  they 
turn  green — just  as  any  well-behaved  leaf  is  supposed  to  do.1  It's 
as  if  they  got  mixed  in  their  dates  and  thought  at  first  it  was 
autumn  and  then  woke  up  and  said: 

"Oh,  yes,  to  be  sure,  this  is  spring!  What  are  we  thinking 
about?" 

Anyhow  they  turn  from  the  autumn  browns  and  reds  to  the 
appropriate  green  of  spring,  and  the  flowers  come  out  and  the 
birds  begin  to  sing  in  the  very  season  when  our  winter  winds  are 
loudest  and  the  rock  mills  of  the  sea  are  roaring  at  their  work. 

In  which  Hemisphere,  the  Northern  or  the  Southern,  do  the 
sea  mills  have  most  land  to  work  on? 

In  Shakespere's  "Tempest"  you  will  find  a  description  of  a 
storm  at  sea  that  will  take  your  breath  away.  Almost  the  whole 
of  Scene  2,  Act  I,  is  in  that  terrible  storm.  In  fact,  the  whole 
play,  as  the  title  of  it  indicates,  is  full  of  storm. 

While  you  are  looking  for  storms  in  Shakespeare  see  what  you 
can  find  in  "Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,"  "Twelfth  Night,"  "Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,"  and  "The  Merchant  of  Venice." 

Speaking  of  the  sea  still  being  in  the  Stone  Age  what  do  you 
1  Livingstone's  "Expedition  to  the  Zambesi." 


232      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

i 

know  about  the  kind  of  tools  man  used  in  the  Stone  Age  and  how 
he  got  along?1 

(You'll  find  that  the  story  of  the  development  of  man,  as  dealt 
with  in  connection  with  the  Stone  Age,  is  part  of  the  strangest 
story  of  all  the  strange  stories  of  science.  You  will  get  a  brief 
outline  of  it  in  this  story  of  mine,  in  the  last  chapter.) 

How  much  more  do  you  know  about  pneumatic  tools  than 
Father  Neptune  does?  No  doubt  you've  used  a  "pneumatic" 
tool  of  a  sort  yourself  more  than  once — a  tool  for  making  a  noise. 
Guess  what.  A  pop-gun !  Look  up  pneumatic  tools,  and  you  will 
find  that  the  same  thing  that  makes  the  pop-gun  pop  helps  to  build 
skyscrapers,  locomotives,  and  steamships,  and  do  a  lot  of  other 
wonderful  things. 

In  connection  with  the  water  wedges  made  by  the  sea  you  must 
remember  that  curious  trick  ice  has  when  it  freezes  (page  154); 
otherwise  you  can't  understand  how  it  could  act  like  a  wedge. 

Yes,  and  wedges,  simple  as  they  look,  are  almost  as  wonderful 
as  levers;  and  you  know  what  Archimedes  said  he  could  do  with 
a  lever. 

The  whole  subject  of  machinery  and  particularly  of  "automatic" 
or  so-called  self-acting  machinery2  is  fascinating.  Find  out  about 
planing  mills  and  how  they  work,  particularly  why  they  stop 
planing  just  when  they  are  told  to. 

In  connection  with  how  the  sea  sometimes  helps  make  harbors 
think  of  as  many  great  harbors  as  you  can,  and  then  look  on  your 
geography  map  and  see  how  many  you  have  missed. 

What  character  in  "Titus  Andronicus"  says  that  about  the 
man  standing  on  a  rock  and  watching  the  sea  come  to  eat  him  up  ? 

Your  geography  has  a  good  deal  to  say  about  continental  shelves; 
and  with  pictures.  Do  you  remember? 

Speaking  of  lands  sinking  under  the  sea  you'll  run  into  a  world 
of  interesting  things  if  you  look  up  the  story  of  the  Lost  Island  of 
Atlantis;  about  the  Egyptian  priest  who  first  described  it  to  Solon, 

1  Interesting   books   on   this  subject  are:  Starr's  "First    Steps    in 
Human  Progress"  (Chautauqua  Reading  Course)  and  Clodd's  "Child- 
hood of  the  World."     Osborn's  "The  Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Age"  is  the 
latest  and  most  comprehensive  work  on  the  subject. 

2  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  only  machinery  that  is  really  automatic  is 
the  machinery  of  nature,  of  which  what  we  have  called  "the" machinery 
of  the  sea"  is  an  example. 


THE  AUTUMN  WINDS  233 

the  Greek  lawgiver,  as  an  earthly  paradise  where  all  the  laws  and 
everything  else  were  just  right. 

And  if  you're  of  High  School  age  you'll  enjoy  reading  what 
Plato1  and  Homer2  say  about  this  ideal  land. 

Isn't  it  a  striking  thing  how  the  big  sea  that  can  look  so  fierce 
takes  such  tender  care  of  the  little  coral  people?  And  what  ex- 
traordinary folks  these  coral  people  are !  Any  gopd  article  about 
them  will  tell  you  worlds  of  interesting  things.  For  instance,  you 
will  find  the  people  of  whole  villages  living  together  with  only 
one  backbone.  I  mean  not  one  backbone  apiece  but  one  backbone 
among  them  all  I 

And  they  have  the  queerest  way  with  their  stomachs,  a  kind  of 
co-operative  digestion,  of  co-operative  housekeeping.  (Your  mother 
will  be  particularly  interested  in  this  because  it  shows  the  "com- 
munity kitchen"  idea  has  been  thoroughly  tried  out  and  it  works! 
If  you  don't  know  about  "community  kitchens"  among  human 
housekeepers  ask  mother  to  tell  you,  and  then  you  tell  her  what 
you  found  out  about  these  strange  little  housekeepers  of  the  sea.) 

xTimaeus.  2  The  Odyssey. 


CHAPTER  XI 

(NOVEMBER) 

It  is  a  noble  thing  for  men  ...  to  make  the  face  of  a  wall 
look  infinite,  and  its  edge  against  the  sky  like  an  horizon;  or 
even  if  less  than  this  be  reached,  it  is  still  delightful  to  mark  the 
play  of  passing  light  on  its  broad  surface,  and  to  see  by  how 
many  artifices  and  gradations  of  tinting  and  shadow,  time 
and  storm  will  set  their  wild  signatures  upon  it. 

— Ruskin  :  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture. 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS 

One  of  the  most  interesting  things  in  this  whole  won- 
derful story  of  the  life  history  of  the  world  is  how  men 
were  first  able  to  read  it  at  all.  For  we  know  they  didn't 
find  it  written  out  in  plain  print  as  we  have  it  now.  Neither 
was  it  told  in  any  one  language  so  that  getting  hold  of  the 
thread  of  the  story  they  could  unravel  it  all,  as  other  learned 
men  did  the  picture  writing  of  the  Egyptians  and  the 
wedge-shaped  marks  on  Assyrian  bricks. 

We  know  already  how  they  learned  that  rivers  open  their 
own  gateways  through  the  mountains;  how  they  know 
rocks  are  made  over  in  the  fairyland  of  change;  how  they 
know  the  ancient  glaciers  scattered  the  boulders  over  moun- 
tainside, valley,  and  field;  how  they  know  the  mountains 
are  children  of  the  sea. 

All  this  and  more  we  have  been  reading  in  the  written 
language  of  the  rocks,  but  there  are  other  things  in  this 
234 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS       235 


A  WALL  THAT  VULCAN  BUILT 

I've  said  it  several  times  before,  but  I  can't  help  saying  it  here  again,  how  much 
more  wonderful  the  ways  of  Nature  are  than  was  ever  dreamed  of  even  in  the  won- 
der tales  of  the  Greeks !  Take  this  great  iron  wall,  for  example — a  wall  of  the  iron 
rock  called  "lava" — and  who  would  suppose  that  it  was  made  by  natural  forces? 
It  was  driven  in  a  molten  state  into  a  crack  in  overlying  rock.  After  it  cooled,  the 
rock  above  and  on  either  side  of  it,  being  of  softer  material,  was  worn  away.  This 
wall  is  near  Spanish  Peaks,  Colorado.  It  is  100  feet  high  and  some  30  feet  wide. 
Colorado  boys,  on  their  vacations  in  that  region,  run  along  the  top  of  it  for  miles. 


rock  script  that  I  have  kept  for  this  last  but  one  of  our 
pleasant  talks,  so  that  they  might  serve  as  a  kind  of  sum- 
mary and  remembrance  of  all  that  has  gone  before. 

I.    THE  MYSTERIES  IN  MARBLE  WALLS 

Take  a  piece  of  marble  for  example,  such  as  you  see 
along  the  walls  of  our  great  modern  buildings.  There's 
a  story  for  you !  Why,  if  half  the  things  it  tells  had  just 
happened,  or  even  just  been  discovered  by  some  enter- 
prising reporter,  we  should  see  pages  and  pages  about  it 
all  in  every  newspaper  in  the  land. 


236   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

HOW  MARBLE   RETELLS   THE   WORLD   HISTORY 

In  that  piece  of  marble  alone  you  have  a  pretty  full 
review  of  the  earth's  history;  of  many  of  the  most  impor- 
tant things  we  have  seen  and  heard  about  since  we  all 
started  out  together  in  Chapter  I.  It  tells  of  strange  life 
in  ancient  seas;  of  being  buried  deep  in  the  earth  under 
immense  pressure,  and  where  it  could  feel  the  intense  heat 
of  the  rock  at  the  centre,  and  of  coming  up  again  com- 
pletely changed;  transformed  from  the  substance  of  a 
dead  sea  creature's  shell  to  a  crystallized  stone  beautifully 
colored  and  of  many  patterns;  of  the  chemistry  of  the 
world  underground  and  the  laboratories  in  which  its  lovely 
coloring  were  made  and  blended;  and  solid  rock  threaded 
through  rock  with  a  skill  that  no  worker  in  mosaic  has 
ever  equalled;  drawn  out  and  fixed  in  mere  films  of  white, 
fading  into  the  rich  dark  of  the  marble  around  them  like 
white  clouds  shredded  by  the  winds. 


THE  STRANGE  STORIES  THAT  MARBLE  TELLS 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS        237 

Those  broader  lines  bending  and  turning,  rising  and 
falling,  tell  of  the  work  of  the  giant  forces  that  lift  the 
mountains  into  place  and  of  the  great  earthquakes  that 
accompany  mountain  building.  When  those  little  quaver- 
ing lines  were  being  made,  away  down  in  the  earth  where 
the  limestone  changed  to  marble,  mountains  were  slowly 
rising  into  the  sky  on  the  earth's  surface  far  above.  The 
quaverings  in  the  marble  are  pictures,  "line  drawings" 
of  the  mountain  story.  And  beside  these  lines  that  you 
can  read  so  plainly  there  are  others  so  small  that  you  need 
a  magnifying  glass  to  see  them;  echoes,  away  down  in 
the  fairyland  of  the  microscope,  of  the  doings  of  the  giants 
of  Mountainland  far  above. 

In  following  the  lines  of  the  earth's  great  walls  of  rock 
over  a  wide  extent  they  are  found  waving  sharply  up  and 
down  in  one  section,  rising  and  falling  like  ocean  swells 
in  another,  in  forward  sloping  folds  in  another,  and  some- 
times even  with  folds  doubling  over,  as  if  the  great  moun- 
tains which  these  folds  made  were  trying  to  stand  on  their 
heads. 

WHY   LINES   IN   MARBLE   REPEAT  MOUNTAIN  FORMS 

All  these  rock  folds  which,  with  the  help  of  the  sculp- 
turing of  the  elements,  produce  the  infinite  variety  of 
beauty  in  mountain  scenery  are,  speaking  generally,  re- 
peated in  the  lines  of  the  marble.  But  they  are  repeated 
only  in  miniature,  because  the  rocks  deep  in  the  earth  are 
under  such  pressure  that  while  the  rocks  on  the  surface 
are  free  to  rise  in  big  and  comparatively  simple  waves 
those  beneath  are  doubled  up  into  smaller  and  much  more 
crumpled  folds.  Take  several  sheets  of  paper  lying  free 


238   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

on  the  table  and  press  them  from  the  ends.  They  will  rise 
in  simple  arches  as  most  mountains  do.  Now  lay  a  book 
on  these  sheets  and  press  from  the  ends  again.  You  see 


HOW  MOTHER  NATURE  MAKES  HER  Z'S 

These  Z-shaped  rock  folds  were  made  by  the  crumpling  up  of  the  crust  as  the  cen- 
tre, cooling,  shrank  away.  They  are  to  be  seen  near  the  east  end  of  Ogden  Canyon, 
Utah.  The  black  lines  were  added  to  the  photograph  in  the  offices  of  Uncle  Sam's 
big  department  of  geology  at  Washington,  to  show  clearly  just  where  the  rock  runs. 

they  crumple  up  a  great  deal  more;    the  larger  wrinkles 
themselves  doubling  into  smaller  ones. 

You  may  often  have  noticed  a  banded  effect  in  marble. 
My,  what  power  it  took  to  do  that !  Pressure  we  can't 
realize.  Pressure  from  above  so  great  that  it  made  this 
marble  spread;  moulded  it  like  clay  in  the  hands  of  the 
potter;  the  same  kind  of  force  that  flattened  out  the  peb- 
bles referred  to  in  Chapter  V.  This  is  called  "rock  flow," 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS        239 

and  how  plainly  the  marble  shows  the  flowing  movement. 
I  always  think  what  the  weather  people  call  "stratus" 
clouds,  look  as  if  they  were  made  by  long  strokes  of  a 
painter's  brush;  and  this  marble  has  the  very  same  flow- 
ing lines.  Such  cloud  pictures  in  marble  are  made  where 
deposits  of  other  kinds  of  rock  have  been  interlaid  with 
the  deposits  of  limestone  which  afterward  changed  to 
marble,  and  it  is  where  these  bands  are  folded  or  bent  that 
we  have  set  down  for  us  the  story  of  the  mountain  folds. 
Those  gossamer  effects  and  the  little  white  clouds  spin- 
ning out  and  fading  into  the  general  mass  of  the  marble, 
how  delicate  they  are !  Yet  it  took  a  force  that  made  the 
earth  quake  to  put  them  there.  The  more  we  know  of 
the  strange  and  fearful  things  that  happen  in  times  of  earth- 
quake the  more  we  can  read  between  these  filmy  lines. 
They  tell  of  the  sides  of  mountains  tumbling  down  and 
spreading  their  valleys  with  a  chaos  of  broken  stone;  mak- 
ing cliffs  where  there  were  peaks  and  peaks  where  there 
were  cliffs;  changing  the  course  of  rivers;  shifting  whole 
forests  on  the  mountainside  and  replacing  them  with  grim 
walls  and  bastions  of  barren  stone — all  in  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye ! 

THE   EARTHQUAKES   AND    THE   DELICATE   FILMS 

It  is  by  the  crushing  movements  that  made  the  earth- 
quake that  rocks  are  broken  into  confusions  of  cracks  such 
as  you  often  see  in  a  thick  glass  window  that  has  been 
broken.  Then  into  these  cracks  come  dissolved  minerals 
from  other  rocks  and  harden  into  stone.  In  the  marble 
one  set  of  veins  often  runs  right  through  another  as  if  they 
had  been  inlaid.  Then  there  may  be  other  veins  that  cross 


240   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


4w^^wlfMv•«MlV^!l^^ 


7e  ?»»"-" "•" ~**~~ UMPW — ^M^^U^MAVW-^WvAMvv v« 


WHEN  THE  EARTHQUAKE  TAKES  ITS   PEN  IN  HAND 

These  are,  so  to  speak,  the  autographs  of  earthquakes — the  records  earthquakes 
themselves  make  on  an  instrument  called  the  "seismograph,"  using  a  stylus,  as 
the  ancients  did,  as  you  will  see  by  looking  up  "seismograph"  in  the  dictionary  or 
encyclopaedia.  After  an  earthquake  starts  it  seems  to  stop  for  breath  or  for  want 
of  the  right  word — -just  like  people ;  for  you  notice  portions  of  the  lines  are  almost 
straight.  These  were  made  when  the  earthquake  was  comparatively  quiet.  Then, 
when  it  got  excited  again — as  in  the  second  record  from  the  top — the  stylus  fairly 
jumped  up  and  down;  and  there  where  the  waves  are  long  and  close  together  the 
shocks  were  particularly  severe  and  followed  each  other  rapidly. 


both  of  these — no  end  of  criss-crossings.  The  different 
sets  of  veins  usually  differ  also  in  color  and  in  grain,  and 
even  have  different  kinds  of  mineral  in  them.  With  a 
good  hand-glass  you  can  see  this  difference  in  texture. 

II.    How  VULCAN  DROVE  HIS  AUTOGRAPH  INTO  THE 
ROCKS 

But  there  is  another  kind  of  handwriting  on  the  walls 
that  was  made  with  such  a  vigorous  stroke  that  it  also 
made  the  earth  shake.  Of  course  we  might  expect  Vulcan 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS       241 

to  write  a  rather  vigorous  hand — Vulcan,  forger  of  thun- 
derbolts for  Jove.  The  ancients  thought  volcanoes  be- 
longed to  the  kingdom  of  Vulcan,  so  in  scientific  language 
everything  connected  with  volcanic  action  comes  under 
the  head  of  "Vulcanism."  These  queer  letters  we  are 
talking  about  are  called  "dikes."  They  are  made  of  lava 
that  was  driven  into  cracks  in  the  rocks  and  afterward 
cooled  into  rock  that  is  as  hard  as  iron.  Lava  is  often 
largely  made  of  iron. 


VULCAN'S  FAMOUS  CASTLE  ON  THE  HUDSON 


spots  . 

really  belongs  to  medieval  architecture,  for  it  was  built  in  the  Middle  Ages  of  earth 
long  history. 


242      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 


THIS  IS  THE  HAND  OF  VULCAN,  TOO 


Were  you  ever  down  by  the  seashore  in  a  storm?  If 
so  you  remember  how  the  ground  under  your  feet  shook 
when  a  great  wave  rushed  into  some  narrow  passage  or 
crevice  in  the  rocks,  and  was  tossed  high  in  the  air  in  spray. 
Then  just  imagine  molten  lava,  which  is  many  times  heavier 
than  water,  driven  into  a  crack  in  a  rock  with  the  force  of 
a  cannon-ball.  That's  how  it  happened.  That's  how  those 
dark  strokes  in  the  rock  with  their  heavy  shading  were 
made. 

This  was  done  in  the  depths  of  the  earth;  not  on  the 
surface  where  you  see  these  rocks  now.  They  used  to  have 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS 


243 


piles  of  other  rocks  above  them,  but  these  in  course  of  time 
have  been  weathered  away.  This  is  known,  not  only  from 
the  marks  of  the  wearing  but  from  the  fact  that  these  dikes, 
as  well  as  the  rock  into  which  they  have  been  driven,  are 
crystallized,  wholly  or  in  part.  Such  crystallizing,  as  we 
know,  takes  place  away  down  in  the  earth. 

Dikes  are  very  common.  In  some  places  you  find  the 
rocks  fairly  laced  with  them.  The  picture  of  the  dikes  in 
the  granite  shores  at  Marblehead  also  shows  (in  the  hori- 
zontal plan)  many  "faults"  or  slips  of  the  rock  since  the 
dike  was  made,  and  each  slip  probably  gave  rise  to  an 
earthquake.  So  you  see  there's  the  story  of  a  terrible 
time  written  on  those  quiet  old  residents  by  the  sea. 


THE  GIANT'S  CAUSEWAY 

Here  is  a  still  more  striking  example  of  the  formation  of  columns  in  lava — the 
Giant's  Causeway.  Here  are  40,000  columns,  packed  like  the  cells  of  a  honeycomb, 
and  they  slope  to  the  pavement  in  the  foreground  that  gives  the  mass  its  name. 
That  bees  should  make  their  little  honey-jars  in  such  regular  form  is  wonder- 
ful enough,  but  think  of  lava  shaping  its  own  self  into  columns  like  that ! 


244      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

DID   MR.   VULCAN   USE   A    STEAM   PILE-DRIVER? 

Just  what  power  Mr.  Vulcan  used  to  drive  the  dikes 
is  not  known  for  sure,  but  I'll  tell  you  how  it  is  supposed 
to  have  been  done.  Remember  that  all  rocks  that  are 
deep  down  in  the  earth  contain  water,  shut  up  in  their 
pores.  Then  remember  how  hot  it  is  down  there  and  how 
this  heat  would  make  steam  right  in  the  rocks.  Then  let 
the  rock  above  be. cracked  by  the  movements  of  the  earth 
crust,  and  this  crack  extend  down  to  where  these  hot  rocks 
are,  the  pressure,  being  released  along  that  crack,  the 
melted  rock  (lava)  would  rush  up,  as  it  does  in  connection 
with  the  eruptions  of  volcanoes,  and  the  exploding  steam 
would  help  drive  it. 

III.    ANCIENT  WEATHER  RECORDS  TURNED  TO  STONE 

So  much  for  the  literary  remains  of  Mr.  Vulcan.  Now 
let's  see  how  much  we  can  make  out  of  the  handwriting 
of  the  waters  and  the  winds  on  these  walls  of  time. 

What  does  the  picture  at  the  top  of  page  245  look  like? 
Rain-drops  in  the  dust.  And  so  you  see  they  are;  but  the 
rain  fell  so  long  that  the  pits  made  in  the  dust  have  turned 
to  stone.  Think  of  the  autograph  of  a  rain-drop  older  than 
the  Pharaohs;  older  than  the  pyramids  these  Pharaohs 
built  to  perpetuate  their  names. 

And  this  is  how  such  rain-drops  immortalize  themselves; 
this  is  the  interpretation  of  their  handwriting  on  the  walls. 
Along  the  dry  shore  of  an  ancient  sea  when  the  tide  was 
out,  rain-drops  fell  on  the  sand  and  dust.  Tides  often 
come  in  with  a  rush,  in  wild  waves  driven  by  the  wind,  but 
when  there  is  no  wind  and  no  waves  rolling  in  from  far 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS        245 


RAIN-DROP  AUTOGRAPHS  OLDER  THAN  THE  PHARAOHS 

distant  storms  the  tide  may  overspread  such  delicate  things 
as  the  imprint  of  rain-drops  with  a  thin  protecting  film  of 
mud.  This  was  what  happened  to  our  little  rain  pits.  Later 
tides  overlaid  them  deeper  from  day  to  day,  and  in  course 
of  time  both  the  layer  containing  the  rain-drop  prints  and 
the  overlying  layers  of  sediment  turned  to  stone.  Often 
the  heat  of  a  summer  sun  will  bake  these  rain-drop  designs 
and  this  you  see  helps;  it  holds  the  impression  until  the 
tide  can  come  in  and  spread  its  protecting  film.  Many 
imprints  of  rain-drops  and  of  the  feet  of  reptiles  are  found 
in  the  sandstone  underlying  the  coal  seams  in  eastern 
Pennsylvania,  and  they  are  always,  I  am  told,  covered 
with  a  fine  powdery  material,  which  was  once  the  slime 
and  mud  of  the  tide.  Such  rain  marks  are  often  found 
also  in  slate.  Wouldn't  you  like  to  have  a  slate  with  one 
of  these  rain-drop  autographs  on  it? 


246      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Here,  by  the  way,  is  a  very  important  thing  these  rain- 
drops tell.  Says  Professor  Shaler: 

"They  tell  us  that  the  ordinary  machinery  of  the  at- 
mosphere was  operating  in  those  days  very  much  as  it  is 
to-day,  and  that  the  climate  was  much  the  same."1 

So,  he  argues,  the  great  Ice  Age  couldn't  have  been  due 
to  change  of  climate,  but  to  the  other  things  that  we  read 
about  in  Chapter  II.  For  they  even  know  in  what  ages 
different  records  of  rain-drops  were  made  because  they  are 
found  in  rocks  laid  down  in  different  periods;  and  one  of 
the  periods  in  which  they  are  found  was  that  in  which  the 
North  Pole  ice  and  its  neighbors  came  down  and  made 
us  those  long  visits. 

STORY  OF  A  STROLL  IN  THE  RAIN 

Another  story  found  in  museums  is  written  in  slate — 
not  by  a  rain-drop  but  by  a  living  creature.  The  slate 
shows  the  track  of  a  reptile  with  feet  like  a  bird.  Evi- 
dently he  was  strolling  along  in  the  rain;  for  there  you  see 
the  marks  of  the  rain-drops  right  among  the  marks  of  his 
feet,  and  in  the  footprints  themselves.  Being  a  reptile  who 
spent  much  of  his  time  in  or  near  the  water  he  no  doubt 
enjoyed  these  little  pats  of  the  rain-drops  as  he  went  along. 

BUT  THIS   STROLL  WAS   TAKEN   IN   THE   SUN 

In  another  of  these  museum  specimens  we  see  written  out 
just  as  plainly  the  story  of  a  stroll  in  the  sun.  There  are 

1  This  quotation  is  from  Doctor  Shaler's  "Nature  and  Man  in  Amer- 
ica," a  book  you  should  read,  as  you  should  all  of  Doctor  Shaler's 
books.  No  one  has  observed  so  many  interesting  things  in  the  field 
of  geology  and  few  have  written  about  them  so  simply  or  reasoned 
about  them  so  well. 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS       247 


"THEN  THERE  CAME  A  LONG  DRY  SPELL" 

This  shows  how  the  cracks  in  dried-up  mud  are  preserved  in  stone.  The  process 
is  the  same  as  in  the  case  of  the  stone  imprints  of  rain-drops,  the  imprints  being 
protected  by  successive  deposits  of  mud  by  quiet  tides,  and  afterward  turning  to 
stone. 


the  imprints  of  Mr.  Reptile's  feet,  and  there  are  the  sun- 
cracks  in  the  mud  showing  that  the  sun  was  shining — or 
at  least  that  it  had  been  shining  for  several  days  or  weeks, 
for  it  takes  a  little  time  to  make  sun-cracks  in  mud.  This 
story,  we  might  suppose,  was  written  so  that  it  could  be 
read  by  the  blind;  the  cracks,  as  well  as  the  footprints, 
are  brought  out  in  raised  lettering.  Sun-cracked  mud, 
after  a  long  dry  "spell,"  will  bake  so  that  the  cracks  will 
not  be  washed  out  by  the  returning  tide  but  instead  be 
filled  by  other  material,  and  this  material  will  go  on  build- 
ing up  to  a  certain  extent;  so  making  those  ridges. 

THE   STONE   AUTOGRAPHS    OF   GENTLE   BREEZES 

On  still  other  stones  you  will  find  written  the  story  of 
gentle  breezes  that  stirred  the  water  and  made  ripples 
on  long-buried  shores.  First  the  breezes  rippled  the  shallow 
waters  near  the  shore.  Then  the  waters  rippled  the  sand, 


248      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

and  the  sediments  of  the  tide  preserved  these  ripple  marks 
as  they  did  the  rain-drops  and  the  footprints. 

But  the  wind  alone,  without  the  help  of  water  ripples, 
can  write  its  name  in  the  sands  of  time.  And  when  you 
get  to  know  the  handwriting  of  wind  and  wave  you  will 
not  mistake  the  one  for  the  other.  You  are  likely  to  find 
wind  ripples  on  any  big  heap  of  sand.  Have  a  good  look 
at  them  and  then  go  down  to  shallow  water  on  a  sandy 
shore  and  compare  the  two  kinds.  That's  the  way  the 
great  men  of  science  do;  they  notice  every  little  thing. 

WEATHER   RECORDS    ON   THE   MOUNTAIN   WALLS 

From  a  scientific  standpoint  little  things  may  be  just 
as  big  as  big  things.  For  example,  in  this  matter  of  old 
weather  records  these  rain-drops  and  ripple  stones  are  just 


From  Norton's  "  Elements  of  Geology."    By  permission  of  Ginn  and  Company 
THE  STORY  OF  BIG   ROUND  TOP  AND   LITTLE   ROUND   TOP 

One  story  of  Big  Round  Top  and  Little  Round  Top  your  history  tells,  but  long 
before  the  battle  of  Gettysburg  these  two  mountains  had  age-long  battles  of  their 
own  with  the  winds,  the  rains,  and  the  frosts,  and  in  these  battles  lost  their  peaks 
and  their  sharp  outlines  of  jagged  rock,  and  became  rounded  down  to  the  forms  we 
see  before  us.  Those  rocks  in  the  field  were  probably  broken  off  in  these  battles, 
as  the  rocks  of  high  mountains  are  to-day,  and  carried  down  by  roaring  torrents. 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS       249 


WEATHER  RECORDS  ON  THE  WALLS  OF  TIME 

What  is  now  the  Great  Salt  Lake  used  to  be  a  much  greater  lake  that  wasn't  salt 
at  all.  That  vast  flight  of  steps  up  the  mountainside  shows  how  wide  it  spread. 
As  the  big  lake  dried  up,  and  grew  smaller  and  smaller  and  saltier  and  saltier,  its 
shores  were  bounded  successively  by  those  wave-cut  cliffs. 

as  interesting  as  other  weather  records  written  large  on 
mountain  walls;  such  as  those  which  tell  that  what  is  now 
the  Dead  Sea  was  once  part  of  a  much  larger  sea  that  wasn't 
dead  at  all.  You  may  never  get  to  read  these  records  on 
the  mountain  walls  of  Palestine,  for  they  are  a  long  way 
off,  but  here  in  our  own  country  we  have  a  similar  story 
told  on  mountain  walls  in  the  region  of  another  dead  sea 
—the  Great  Salt  Lake  of  Utah.  From  Salt  Lake  City 
you  can  see  on  the  mountain  surrounding  the  desert  of 
the  Great  Basin  the  marks  of  old  shore  lines;  where  the 
waves  cut  into  the  rock.  These  marks  show  that  this  Basin 
once  held  two  great  lakes,  and  the  one  in  the  eastern  por- 
tion dried  up  into  what  is  now  Great  Salt  Lake. 


250      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

IV.     STORIES  WRITTEN  ON  THE  PEBBLES 

Sometimes  when  a  geologist  picks  up  a  pebble  and  looks 
at  it  a  moment  he  can  hear  the  roar  of  mountain  torrents 
and  of  lowland  streams  in  flood.  If  the  pebble  is  round 
it  shows  that  it  has  been  carried  far  and  rolled  about  by 
streams.  If  it  has  pits  in  it  this  shows  that  its  water  jour- 
neys were  rough,  because  such  pits  are  made  by  knocking 
against  other  pebbles  and  sharp  stones  in  the  struggle  and 
confusion  of  the  rushing  waters.  You  see  these  little  dots 
are  a  kind  of  shorthand,  for  we  pebbles  are  stenographers 
too! 


THE  PERCHED  BOULDER  IN  BRONX  PARK 

This  is  one  of  the  interesting  things  to  be  seen  when  you  visit  Bronx  Park  in  New 
York  City.  Of  course,  you  know  how  that  old  boulder  got  there,  and  how  he  drew 
those  straight  lines  in  the  rock-bed  beneath,  but  many  visitors  to  the  park  do  not. 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS        251 


HOW  PEBBLES  TELL  OF  THEIR  TRAVELS 

Other  great  stories  in  small  space  are  told  on  glacial 
pebbles.  Scientific  men  can  often  tell  from  the  look  of  a 
pebble  whether  it  was  shaped  by  rivers,  by  the  sea,  by  the 
sand  blasts  of  desert  winds,  or  by  the  glaciers.  Not  only 


From  Norton's  "Elements  of  Geology."    By  permission  of  Ginn  and  Company 

ONE   PEBBLE  IN  ITS  TIME  PLAYS   MANY   PARTS 

Here  are  pebbles  faceted  in  different  ways  by  glaciers.  No.  i  has  six  facets.  No. 
4,  originally  a  rounded  river  pebble,  has  been  rubbed  down  to  one  flat  face.  Nos. 
3  and  5  are  battered  little  travellers  faceted  on  one  side  only.  Notice  how  No.  5 
got  his  face  scratched  just  as  I  did. 


that,  but,  if  it  is  a  glaciated  pebble,  on  what  part  of  the 
glacier  it  was  carried;  whether  in  the  middle  of  its  back, 
or  on  the  sides,  like  the  passengers  in  an  Irish  jaunting- 
car;  or  whether  it  rode  underneath,  like  a  tramp  stealing 
a  ride  on  the  bumpers.  The  stones  in  the  middle  of  the 
glacier's  back  naturally  keep  their  sharp  edges  longer  than 
stones  on  the  side,  ground  as  the  side  stones  are  by  the 
moving  ice  mass  against  the  mountain  walls.  And  the 
stones  on  both  top  and  sides  would  lose  less  of  their  edges 
than  the  stones  underneath  the  ice. 


STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


PEBBLE  FACETED   BY  WIND-BLOWN  SAND 

You  remember  how  the  glaciers  ground  flat  faces  or  facets  on  the  pebbles,  don't 
you?  Here  is  another  example  of  Nature's  lapidary  work,  but  here  she  has  used 
wind  and  sand  instead  of  ice. 


V.    A  GREATER  C^SAR  AND  His  COMMENTARIES 

Well,  there  he  is  again,  you  see,  Mr.  Glacier  of  the  Ice 
Age.  He's  always  turning  up,  everywhere  you  go  in  earth 
history.  As  Shakespere's  Mr.  Cassius  said  of  Mr.  Julius 
Caesar,  "he  bestrode  the  world."  And,  like  the  Roman 
Caesar,  this  Caesar  wrote  the  story  of  his  own  exploits;  but 
although  a  vastly  greater  conqueror  than  the  famous  Ro- 
man, he  was  even  more  modest.  Caesar  and  his  Commen- 
taries, our  High  School  friend  will  tell  you,  nearly  always 
refers  to  himself  in  the  third  person;  but  in  his  commen- 
taries on  his  travels  and  exploits  the  Old  Man  of  the  Moun- 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS       253 

tain  didn't  even  use  his  own  name.    He  left  the  editors 
of  his  manuscript  to  find  out  who  he  was. 

HOW   THE   GREAT   LAKES   WERE   TIPPED   UP 

One  of  the  most  striking  things  he  did,  of  which  he  wrote 
the  record  on  the  walls,  was  to  tip  up  the  Great  Lakes. 
You  remember  just  how  he  made  them.  Well,  it  seems 
that  as  he  started  back  home  he  tipped  them  up.  Sup- 
pose you  could  pick  up  the  vast  stone  bowls  that  hold  these 
lakes  and  tip  them  toward  the  north  as  easily  as  you  can 
tip  a  bowl  of  water,  what  would  the  water  do  ?  It  would 
fall  lower  along  the  south  shores  of  the  lakes  and  rise  along 
the  northern  shores,  wouldn't  it  ?  Then  suppose  the  lakes 
were  kept  tipped  up  in  this  way  for  ages,  and  summer  wind 
storms  and  winter  tempests  dashed  waves  against  their 
shores,  what  would  happen?  Stone  walls  rising  above 
the  shore  would  have  terraces  cut  into  them,  and  the  line 
of  these  terraces  would  tilt  toward  the  north.  There  are 
terraces  just  like  that  on  rocks  bordering  the  Great  Lakes, 
and  the  explanation  of  their 'tilt  is  that  the  lakes  them- 
selves were  tipped  up,  and  that  the  Old  Man  of  the  Moun- 
tain did  the  tipping.  The  rock  crust  of  the  round  earth 
bends  under  great  weight  like  an  arch.  So  when  the  enor- 
mous weight  of  the  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age  was  on  a  por- 
tion of  the  arch  it  bent  down.  Then,  as  the  glaciers  re- 
treated, the  weight  of  them  was  shifted  northward  all  the 
time.  Finally  when  the  glaciers  in  the  region  of  the  lakes 
had  melted  quite  away  the  arch  slowly  rose  into  place 
again  and  lifted  the  terraces  above  the  water  line  as  we  see 
them  to-day. 

Throughout  regions  the  glaciers  visited  you  find  rocks 


254      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 


SCENE  ON  THE  COAST  OF  NORWAY  BY  A.   GLACIER 

You  know  the  fiords.  You've  met  them  in  your  geography.  'This  is  a  fiord 
on  the  Norway  coast.  Notice  how  smooth  the  walls  of  the  mountains  are.  They 
were  trimmed  down  by  the  ice,  which  also  plowed  off  their  soil.  We  are  here  look- 
ing up  what  was  once  a  river  valley,  but  the  glacier  cut  it  down  below  sea  level,  and 
this  is  sea  water.  Notice  in  the  openings  of  the  mountains  all  the  way  up  the  valley 
where  the  tributaries  of  the  ancient  river  flowed  in  then  as  now. 


polished  like  mirrors;    in  other  cases  they  are  scratched, 
and  in  others  deeply  grooved. 

HOW   THIS   MR.    C^SAR  IS   TRANSLATED 

No  one  scratch  can  be  followed  far.  The  composition 
is,  like  Caesar's,  in  short  sentences,  whole  episodes  in  a 
word:  "Veni,  vidi,  vici."  But  a  series  of  scratches  all 
run  in  one  general  direction — north  and  south.  To  get 
at  the  meaning — just  as  in  construing  Caesar — you  must 
take  the  context;  .what  goes  before  and  after. 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS        255 

The  sides  of  the  valleys  of  the  Alps  from  1,000  to  2,000 
feet  above  the  surface  of  the  glaciers  of  our  own  time  are 
scratched  and  furrowed  in  the  same  way.  Here  we  catch 
Mr.  Glacier  almost  in  the  very  act  of  writing. 

THE  HANDWRITING   OF   THE   TWO   C^SARS 

To  do  this  writing,  our  Caesar,  like  the  Caesar  of  the  High 
School,  used  a  stylus.  Mr.  Glacier's  stylus,  as  we  know,  was 
made  of  stone  held  fast  in  his  icy  grip  (page  121).  And 
here  is  another  curious  resemblance  between  the  manu- 
scripts of  Mr.  G.  Caesar  and  Mr.  J.  Caesar.  They  both  wrote 
in  straight  lines.  The  reason  Julius  Caesar  and  other  Roman 
gentlemen  wrote  in  letters  made  of  straight  lines  was  that 
they  scratched  these  letters  on  tablets  covered  with  wax, 
using  a  sharpened  piece  of  iron  or  ivory.  You  can  see  it 
would  be  much  easier  with  such  writing  tools  and  material 
to  form  letters  in  straight  lines  than  to  write  in  flowing, 
rounded  and  connected  lines  as  we  do  so  easily  with  a  nice 
flexible  pen  on  a  smooth  surface. 

HOW   THE   OLD   MEN   CHANGED   A   "v"   TO  A   "u" 

Here  is  something  else  about  the  story  of  the  Old  Men 
of  the  Mountain  that  is  a  curious  reminder  of  the  Romans 
and  their  letters.  The  Romans  had  no  letter  U  in  their 
alphabet  and  so  V  had  to  do  a  double  duty;  it  had  to  be 
a  V  and  then  when  asked,  had  to  take  its  place  in  line  and 
pretend  to  be  a  U.  For  instance,  a  Roman  who  wanted 
to  write  the  word  " number"  would  do  it  in  this  way: 
"NVMERO."  After  a  while,  in  the  history  of  the  growth 
of  our  alphabet,  the  V  that  was  intended  for  U  was  rounded 
at  the  bottom. 


256      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

Now,  curiously  enough,  the  writing  of  the  Old  Men  of 
the  Mountain  has  gone  through  the  same  process.  River 
valleys  in  mountain  regions,  as  elsewhere,  are  originally 
V-shaped,  but  where  glaciers  flowed  down  these  valleys 


ON  THE  AGGER  WALL 

w ... . 

\AlivH 

Cf+ 


THE  HANDWRITING   OF  THE   GLACIERS  AND   THE  ROMANS 

Here  is  an  interesting  relic  of  ancient  days  that  will  enable  you  to  compare  the 
chirography  of  the  Old  Men  of  the  Mountain  with  that  of  the  Romans.  These  are 
marks  left  by  the  masons  on  Roman  walls.  They  show  just  what  part  each  mason 
laid,  so  that  if  the  wall  proved  defective  the  authorities  would  know  who  was  re- 
sponsible. 


they  not  only  made  them  wider  but  rounded  out  the  bot- 
toms so  that  they  became  U-shaped.  Look  at  the  valley 
in  the  Wind  River  range  in  Wyoming  shown  in  the  geol- 
ogies. You  notice  the  farther  your  eye  goes  up  into  the 
mountains  the  more  V-shaped  the  valley  becomes.  Back 
toward  antiquity,  you  see,  when  they  had  nothing 
butV! 

All  quite  striking,  isn't  it,  this  strange  kind  of  writing 
on  the  walls  of  time?  As  if,  among  the  ruins  that  are  all 
there  is  left  of  the  fallen  Roman  Empire,  we  should  in  some 
heap  of  dust  and  crumbled  stone  find  one  of  the  very  tablets 
on  which  Caesar  wrote  his  commentaries  and  there  en- 
graved in  Caesar's  own  hand: 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS 


THIS  STYLE  IS  CALLED  FLUTING 

Looks  like  moulding,  doesn't  it?  This  is  a  piece  of  rock,  and  it  was  carved  in 
that  way  by  the  glaciers  with  their  tools  of  embedded  stone.  The  deeper  grooves 
were  made  where  the  rock  was  softer  or  where  the  glacier's  chisels  were  of  a  par- 
ticularly hard  quality,  such  as  flint  or  granite. 


"Caesar,  maximis  bellis  confectis,  in  hiberna  exercitum 
deduxit." 

Can  you  translate  that  for  us  ?  (This  to  the  High  School 
Boy.) 

"As  easy  as  anything,"  says  he.  "Caesar,  on  comple- 
tion of  these  great  wars,  led  his  army  into  winter  quar- 
ters." 

And  that  same  phrase  might  serve  in  Mr.  Glacier's  Com- 
mentaries too.  For  the  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age,  after  their 
great  work  was  done,  also  went  into  winter  quarters;  melt- 
ing back  to  the  present  snow-line  in  our  mountains  and 
the  regions  of  eternal  ice  around  the  pole. 


258      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

One  of  the  most  interesting  stories  of  men's  handwriting  on  the 
walls  and  how  scholars,  many  centuries  afterward,  learned  to  read 
it,  you  will  find  in  encyclopaedias,  histories,  and  other  books  under 
such  headings  as  Egypt,  Assyria,  Rosetta  Stone,  and  most  of  all 
under  Hieroglyphics  ;  a  big  word,  but  full  of  meat  when  once  you've 
cracked  the  shell. 

Among  other  things,  you  will  find  that  if  it  hadn't  been  for  the 
Egyptians  and  other  clever  people  of  the  long  ago  we  would  not  have 
had  our  written  language  to  read  at  all;  on  walls  or  anywhere  else ! 

If  you  had  been  an  Egyptian,  say  4,000  years  ago,  how  many 
letters  do  you  suppose  you  would  have  had  to  learn  before  you 
could  have  read  well  ?  About  a  thousand  !  But  it  wouldn't  have 
been  so  hard  as  you  think,  for  the  Egyptian  letters  talked,  so  to 
speak.  They  told  their  own  story  much  as  did  the  picture  words 
that  told  so  much  to  the  little  Greeks.  These  Egyptian  words, 
however — for  they  were  words,  or  several  words  in  one,  rather 
than  letters — were  real  pictures,  and  very  good  pictures,  too. 
(See  Chambers  under  "Hieroglyphics"  for  the  little  pictures.) 

Some  of  them  were  very  simple.     It  wasn't  hard  to  learn. 

But  now  suppose  you  were  an  Egyptian  and  you  wanted  to 
write  a  letter  telling  somebody  how  pleased  you  were  about  some- 
thing— a  nice  new  book  an  uncle  had  sent  you,  for  instance — the 
proper  picture- word  to  use  would  be  a  lady  beating  a  tambourine. 
She  is  pleased — that's  why  she  is  beating  the  tambourine,  just  as  a 
small  boy  claps  his  hands  when  he  says,  "Oh,  goody,  goody!"  So 
this  picture- word  came  to  be  used  to  express  "joy"  or  "pleasure" 
over  anything. 

These  are  just  some  samples  to  show  you  what  interesting 
things  even  such  formidable  words  as  "hieroglyphics"  are  when 
you  make  friends  with  them.  But  now,  to  get  back  to  Nature's 
handwriting  and  the  nature  myths  connected  with  it,  what  do 
you  know  about  this  Vulcan,  who  left  so  much  of  his  manuscript  in 
the  rocks? 

The  ancients  thought  of  him  as  a  worker  in  metals.  Don't  you 
think  they  would  have,  been  quite  sure  of  it  if  they  had  known 
about  the  dikes  and  the  palisades  of  the  Hudson,  and  Fingal's 
.cave,  with  their  remarkable  iron-like  columns  of  cooled  lava?  But 
he  was  an  artist  in  metals,  too,  and  a  mechanical  engineer,  it 
seems.  Do  you  remember  about  those  two  statues  of  beautiful 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALLS        259 

women  that  he  made  of  pure  gold,  and  how  they  walked  about 
with  him  wherever  he  went  ?  And  the  brazen-footed  bulls  of  /Etes, 
that  filled  the  air  with  their  bellowings  and  from  their  nostrils 
blew  flame  and  smoke  ?  l 

The  Greeks  probably  didn't  know  about  such  "art  metal"  work 
as  the  palisades — certainly  they  didn't  know  about  the  Hudson 
River  or  Fingal's  Cave — but  they  had  Vulcan  (Hephaestus  they 
called  him)  doing  all  sorts  of  other  art-metal  things.  There  was 
the  famous  shield  he  made  for  Achilles,  for  instance.  Homer  takes 
several  pages  just  to  tell  about  the  different  figures  on  it  and  what 
they  meant.2 

Why  do  you  suppose  a  temple  was  erected  on  Mount  Etna? 
(What  kind  of  a  mountain  is  it  ?) 

Wouldn't  it  be  strange  if  we  could  make  hard  coal  out  of  soft? 
Vulcan  does  that  sometimes  with  these  dike  strokes  of  his.3 

The  International  will  also  tell  you  why  dike  rock  is  usually  so 
solid  and  tough,  and  what  the  crystal  people  have  to  do  with 
making  it  so. 

The  Britannica  (28:  188)  tells  how,  in  the  walls  of  volcanoes 
Vulcan  wrote  out  the  hint  for  making  re-enforced  concrete  which 
is  so  important  a  feature  of  modern  architectural  engineering. 

Look  about  on  the  rockbeds  in  the  stone  quarry  and  see  if  you 
can't  find  some  of  the  writing  of  that  Older  Caesar  with  his  queer 
stone  stylus.  Probably  the  men  in  the  quarry  will  have  won- 
dered how  these  scratches  came  there  and  you  can  tell  them. 

There  is  one  style  of  Mr.  Glacier's  hand-work  that  even  the  dogs 
and  the  horses  notice,  and  that  is  the  "mirror  rocks."  Muir  tells 
about  them  in  his  "Mountains  of  California." 

1  I  wonder  if  Vulcan  could  have  been  thinking  of  locomotives — what 
we  sometimes  call  "iron  horses" — when  he  made  those  bulls.  Do  you 


suppose 


2  The  Iliad. 

3  The  International  Encyclopedia. 


CHAPTER  XII 

(DECEMBER) 

"A  fire-mist  and  a  planet, 

A  crystal  and  a  cell, 
A  jelly  fish  and  a  saurian 

And  caves  where  the  cavemen  dwell; 
Then  a  sense  of  law  and  beauty 

And  a  face  turned  from  the  clod — 
Some  call  it  Evolution, 
And  others  call  it  God." 

— William  Herbert  Carruth. 

THE  END   OF  THE  WORLD 

So  the  Ice  Ages  and  their  glaciers  and  the  Romans  and 
their  Caesars  melted  away.  We  know  them  only  by  the 
marks  they  left  on  the  walls  of  time.  But  why  this  con- 
stant doing  and  undoing  of  things  ?  We  have  seen  it  going 
on  from  the  very  beginning;  rock  crumbling  to  dust,  dust 
changing  back  to  rock;  rocks  raised  up  into  mountains, 
mountains  worn  down  to  plains;  then  more  mountains, 
and  on  through  the  same  cycle  of  endless  change;  as  if 
always  starting  the  whole  thing  over  again. 

What  is  it  all  about?  Are  we  getting  anywhere?  If 
so,  where  ? 

Ever  since  men  looked  out  upon  the  world  around  them 

and  began  to  think,  they  have  puzzled  not  only  about  the 

causes  but  the  purpose  of  this  endless  drama  of  creation 

and  decay.    Some  said  one  thing ;  some  said  another.    The 

260 


THE   END   OF  THE  WORLD  261 

Persian  poet  who  wrote  those  fine  lines  about  the  lion  and 
the  lizard  in  the  ruins  of  the  palaces  meant  to  say  that's 
all  that  everything  comes  to;  all  things,  men  included, 
return  to  the  elements  of  which  they  were  made  and 
that's  the  end  of  them.  So,  said  he,  what's  the  use  of 
bothering  one's  head  about  it?  There's  nothing  to  be 
learned.  One  verse  of  his  famous  song  reads  like  this: 

"Myself  when  young  did  eagerly  frequent 
Doctor  and  saint,  and  heard  great  argument 
About  it  and  about;  but  evermore 
Came  out  by  the  same  door  wherein  I  went." 

But  Science,  as  we  shall  now  see,  has  a  better  answer. 

I.    NOTHING  HAPPENS 

In  the  first  place  you  must  have  noticed  as  we  came 
along  through  this  little  book  that  nothing  happens  in 
this  world  of  ours;  everything  is  under  a  government  of 
laws.  Not  only  did  it  turn  out  that  there  was  method  in 
the  apparent  madness  of  the  sea  but  we  found  method 
everywhere.  It  was  not  chance  that  made  our  worlds, 
whether  they  were  born  full-grown  or  grew  up  piece  by 
piece.  And  we  see  the  same  forces  at  work  in  small  things 
as  in  the  great.  The  force  that  keeps  the  earth  in  its  orbit 
is  just  as  careful  to  catch  and  plant  the  tiny  seeds  of  the 
grasses  and  the  pine-trees  drifting  forward  in  the  wind, 
so  keeping  the  world  clothed  with  life  and  verdure. 

ALL  NATURE  UNDER  A  GOVERNMENT  OF  LAW 

So  with  the  seasons  with  all  that  they  mean  in  the  life 
of  the  world;  spring  never  fails  to  follow  winter.  Little 
things  happen  that  make  spring  "late,"  as  we  say;  but 


262      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

spring  itself  never  fails  to  come  and  always  in  its  right 
place  in  the  procession  of  the  year.  All  this  because  the 
earth  stays  in  its  orbit  and  spins  on  its  axis.  Watches 
break  their  mainsprings,  clocks  run  down.  These  things 
"happen";  but  we  never  think  of  saying  that  the  main- 
spring or  the  wheels  "happened,"  or  that  they  "happened" 
into  their  places  in  the  watch.  The  worlds  not  only  make 
their  appointed  round  as  regularly  as  the  wheels  of  a  watch 
but  they  never  run  down,  and  the  power  that  keeps  them 
going  and  in  their  places  never  breaks.  If  it  ever  occurred 
in  any  other  way — if  we  should  hear  of  a  world  flying  out 
of  its  orbit  and  going  banging  around  among  the  other 
worlds,  we  could  talk  of  "happening." 

NATURE'S  ACCIDENT  INSURANCE  SYSTEM 

We  might  call  these  laws  that  make  it  so  certain  that 
nature's  business  will  go  on  as  usual,  rain  or  shine,  the 
Accident  Insurance  of  the  Universe.  We  have  nothing 
quite  like  it  in  human  insurance  systems;  for  these  only 
make  it  up  to  you — the  best  they  can — after  some  acci- 
dent has  happened.  Nature's  insurance  system,  on  the 
other  hand,  makes  it  certain  that  nothing  will  happen  to 
change  the  main  course  of  things.  The  protective  insur- 
ance of  the  universe  is  woven  right  through  Nature  itself. 
The  continents,  for  example,  were  bound,  in  due  course, 
to  rise  in  their  places,  because  it  is  the  nature  of  cooling 
masses  to  shrink  and  for  the  outside  to  cool  the  faster 
and  to  harden  and  to  wrinkle  up.  It  doesn't  matter  whether 
the  cooling  mass  is  a  little  baked  apple  or  a  big  hot  earth. 

Nor  was  it  an  accident  that  the  continents  in  their  orig- 
inal iorm  grew  larger  with  the  fat  of  the  land  that  was 


THE  END   OF  THE  WORLD 


263 


THE  CLOCK  OF  THE  AGES 

By  representing  the  great  geologic  periods  of  time  in  the  form  of  a  clock-face  a 
writer  in  the  Scientific  American  enables  us  to  form  a  rough  conception  of  their  dura- 
tion, their  distinguishing  features,  and  their  relations  to  one  another,  according  to 
ideas  associated  with  the  theory  of  La  Place,  but  which  have  been  considerably 
modified  in  the  light  of  later  reasoning  and  investigation.  The  view  now  generally  ac- 
cepted, for  example,  is  that  the  Azoic  era  was  longer  than  all  subsequent  time.  But, 
taking  the  picture  as  it  stands,  each  "hour"  represents  3,000,000  years.  For  a  quar- 
ter of  the  total  period  up  to  the  very  recent  appearance  of  man  "there  was  darkness 
upon  the  face  of  the  deep."  Next  after  the  Azoic  was  the  Laurentian  Period,  when 
"the  dry  land  appeared."  Later  came  the  dawn  of  life,  and  this  life,  like  the  in- 
animate matter  which  preceded  it,  kept  rising  and  continues  to  rise,  as  the  ages 
pass,  to  higher,  more  beautiful,  and  nobler  forms. 


264   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

added  to  them  under  the  action  of  the  chemistry  of  the 
air.  You  see  Nature  must  understand  chemistry  or  things 
wouldn't  come  out  right  in  the  laboratory,  as  they  always 
do  if  you  have  made  no  mistakes.  Ever  think  of  that, 
Mr.  High  School  Boy  ? 

II.    THE  STRANGEST  THING  OF  ALL  THAT  DIDN'T 
HAPPEN 

But  the  strangest  thing  of  all  that  didn't  happen  in  this 
history  of  the  world  and  its  making  I'm  going  to  tell  you 
about  now. 

KINSHIP   OF   KITTENS   AND   APPLE-TREES 

You  remember  what  I  said  of  the  apple-tree  in  Chap- 
ter V  (page  93),  how  nobody  who  didn't  know  it  to  be  true 
would  believe  that  little  Miss  Greenleaf  and  old  Mr.  Root 
and  rough  Mr.  Bark  and  lovely  Miss  Blossom  were  not 
only  born  under  the  same  roof  but  were  as  closely  related 
as  a  pussy-cat  and  her  nest  full  of  kittens.  I  didn't  men- 
tion the  kittens  then,  but  just  suppose  I  had  done  so;  and 
then  had  gone  on  to  say  that  kittens  are  relations  of  the 
apple  family  and  that  all  birds  are  related  to  all  kittens, 
and  that  both  are  kindred  of  that  terrible  Mr.  Cetiosaurus 
that  we  met  in  the  Bad  Lands  of  Dakota. 

Would  you  have  believed  it? 

No  ?  Well,  I  don't  wonder.  It  was  quite  a  while  before 
the  wise  men  of  science  believed  it.  Now  not  only  is  this 
idea  of  the  origin  of  all  living  things — animal  and  vegetable 
— universally  accepted  by  men  of  science,  but  every  ed- 
ucated person  is  supposed  to  know  about  it.  It  is  always, 
and  as  a  matter  of  course,  put  into  the  school-books  deal- 


THE  END   OF  THE  WORLD  265 

ing  with  the  history  of  nature;  just  as  in  all  histories  we 
are  sure  to  see  Columbus  landing  in  1492  and  George 
Washington  being  inaugurated  April  30,  1789. 

Most  people,  including  the  scientists,  used  to  think 
that  each  kind  of  plant  and  animal  was  given  its  present 
form  in  the  first  place  and  that  this  form  had  never  changed. 
This  was  known  as  the  "special  creation"  theory;  while 
the  idea  that  the  various  kinds  of  plants  and  animals  we 
now  know  gradually  developed  from  quite  different  forms 
is  called  the  theory  of  "evolution."  Among  the  curious 
facts  that  finally  led  educated  people  everywhere  to  believe 
this  strangest  of  all  the  strange  fairy  tales  of  the  land  of 
science  were  these: 

AS  WE  READ  THE  ROCKS  FROM  THE  BOTTOM  UP 

The  remains  and  imprints  of  plant  and  animal  life  of 
long  ago  which  we  find  in  the  rocks  show  successions  of 
related  but  different  forms  in  the  rocks  of  different  ages. 
At  the  beginning  in  the  lowest  rocks  the  forms  are  much 
alike,  but  grow  more  and  more  unlike  as  we  climb  these 
stairs  of  time.  At  first  there  are  no  animals  with  back- 
bones; then  there  come  animals  with  backbones  that  re- 
semble each  other  in  general  build;  and  finally  such  wide 
varieties  of  backboned  creatures  as  fish,  birds,  horses,  and 
men.  And  so  with  endless  varieties  of  birds  and  beasts 
and  creeping  things  and  the  trees  and  the  grasses  of  the 
field. 

Sometimes  the  differences  between  these  apparently 
related  forms,  as  we  find  them  in  the  rocks,  are  very  great; 
but  everything  goes  to  show  that  this  is  because  there  are 
missing  pages,  so  to  speak,  in  the  great  stone  book.  When 


266   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

you  remember  how  long  it  takes  to  make  one  of  these  layers 
of  stone,  and  what  they  go  through  in  cracking  and  twist- 
ing and  wearing  down  on  their  way  back  to  dust  and  the 
sea,  and  how  quickly  the  remains  of  big  animals — to  say 
nothing  of  plants  and  insects — are  destroyed,  you  must 
agree  that  the  wonder  is  that  we  have  any  records  at  all. 
Yet  so  enormous  has  been  the  number  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals that  have  died  in  the  course  of  the  world's  history 
that  there  have  been  found  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
these  remains  and  imprints  between  the  layers  of  stone. 
In  all  cases  the  fashions  in  form  change  from  age  to  age; 
and  the  longer  the  time,  as  shown  by  the  thickness  of  the 
rock,  the  greater  the  change. 

THE  RABBIT  THAT  TURNED  INTO  A  HORSE 

The  horse,  which  has  been  such  a  faithful  carrier  for  man 
since  man  and  horse  arrived  from  the  lower  ranges  of  life, 
also  brought  with  him  on  the  way  up  one  of  the  most  com- 
plete of  these  strange  autobiographies  that  our  brother 
animals  have  recorded  with  their  bones.  The  most  of  this 
story  of  the  horse  was  found  in  the  rocks  of  our  Western 
States,  but  the  first  chapter  of  it  saw  the  light  about  forty 
years  ago  in  England.  When  the  bones  were  found  in 
the  rock  deposits  of  that  country  known  as  London  Clay 
they  looked  so  unhorselike  that  a  famous  paleontologist 
(as  the  students  of  these  ancient  anatomies  are  called) 
gave  it  a  name  which  means  "  rabbit-like  beast."  But  in 
rock  of  the  same  age  in  Wyoming  they  afterward  found 
the  bones  of  an  animal  that  looked  a  little  more  like  a  horse, 
but  plainly  a  close  relation  of  the  rabbit-like  beast.  They 
went  on  rinding  different  forms,  through  thirteen  succes- 


THE  END   OF  THE   WORLD  267 

sive  stages  of  rock  history,  and  with  each  new  period  the 
form  kept  getting  larger  and  more  horselike  until  they 
came  to  a  horse  with  three  toes;  and  finally  to  one  with 
the  single  big  toe  which  we  call  a  hoof.  Instead  of  the 
other  two  toes  there  were  those  two  little  lumps  that  you 
can  feel  in  any  horse's  foot  just  above  the  hoof.  These 
are  the  ends  of  two  small  splintlike  bones  that  are  all  there 
is  left  of  the  other  two  toes. 

So  there  have  been  found  in  the  rock  records  more  or 
less  complete  serial  stories  of  thousands  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals. In  the  case  of  man,  not  only  do  we  find  that  there 
were  once  human  beings  on  earth  like  the  caveman  with  low 
forehead  and  huge  jaw,  but  nothing  has  ever  been  found  to 
indicate  that  there  were  any  higher  types  of  human  beings 
in  existence  in  his  day.  And  both  the  caveman  and  the 
handsomest  human  beings  of  to-day — the  captain  of  our 
football  team,  for  example — have  essentially  the  same 
bodily  framework  as  the  monkey  tribe.  This  does  not 
mean  that  man — even  so  low  a  creature  as  the  caveman — 
descended  from  monkeys,  any  more  than  the  fact  that  he 
has  a  backbone  means  he  descended  from  humming-birds. 
But  the  backbones  in  humming-birds,  monkeys,  and  men 
show  that  all  are  descended  from  older  types  of  backboned 
creatures.  As  monkeys  and  men  are  much  more  alike 
than  men  and  birds  they  are  evidently  more  closely  related. 

We  might  suppose,  to  be  sure,  that  men  and  all  other 
forms  of  life  which  they  resemble  in  any  way  were  so  made 
from  the  beginning;  that  is,  if  we  hadn't  learned  from 
the  records  of  the  rocks  that  they  weren't  so  made  from 
the  beginning.  Yet,  even  after  that,  we  might  go  on  sup- 
posing that  each  species  was  created  separately,  but  that 


268      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  form  was  changed  from  age  to  age.  But  in  that  case 
what  are  you  going  to  say  to  this: 

In  man's  body  are  several  organs  that  are  useless  and 
often  harmful.  Other  animals,  also,  contain  among  useful 
organs  some  that  are  "out-of-date,"  as  we  would  say  if 
we  were  speaking  of  some  old  machines  in  a  machine-shop. 
Why,  in  making  a  brand-new  species,  shouldn't  Nature 
have  all  the  latest  improvements  from  the  start,  just  as 
man  does  in  building  a  brand-new  home?  If  each  species 
was  separately  created  it  is  hard  to  understand  why  these 
useless  or  harmful  organs  should  be  kept;  but  if  one  species 
grew  out  of  another,  by  gradual  improvement,  just  as  cities 
grow  out  of  villages,  this  is  exactly  what  we  might  expect. 

One  of  these  useless  organs  in  man  is  called  the  "vermi- 
form appendix."  It  is  always  getting  its  name  in  the  papers 
by  giving  trouble  to  some  prominent  man.  Now  this  ap- 
pendix, while  a  perfect  nuisance  to  human  beings,  is  just 
the  thing  for  cows  and  other  grass-eating  animals.  In 
them  it  is  very  large  and  of  great  use  in  digestion,  while 
in  the  case  of  man  and  the  monkey  family  it  has  shrunk 
into  a  little  affair  that  puts  in  all  its  time  either  doing 
nothing  or  getting  out  of  fix. 

III.  UPWARD;  ALWAYS  UPWARD 

These  are  some  of  the  reasons  why  the  various  varieties 
of  animals  are  supposed  to  have  descended  from  common 
ancestors  and  to  have  undergone  endless  changes  of  form; 
changes  as  strange  as  anything  that  was  ever  written  into 
a  fairy  story  or  acted  out  in  a  Christmas  pantomime.  There 
are  other  things  quite  as  convincing  and  even  more  thrilling 


THE  END  OF  THE  WORLD  269 

to  read  about,  such  as  the  little  theatre  in  the  chicken's 
egg  where  strange,  changing  shadows  re-enact  the  drama 
of  ancient  life;  but  these  I  am  here  passing  by  because 
my  pages  are  running  out  and  I  want  the  rest  of  them  to 
speak  of  what  seems  to  me  to  be  the  greatest  lesson  of  this 
whole  book;  the  greatest  and  most  useful  and  happiest 
lesson  Science  or  any  kind  of  book  can  teach;  namely, 
that  not  only  is  the  universe  governed  by  Laws  and  Mind, 
but  that  all  these  laws  act  together  as  one  Great  Law  and 
are  working  out  one  general  result,  the  constant  advance 
of  all  things  toward  a  higher  life. 

HOW   MAN   HAS    RISEN   AS   HE   DESCENDED 

As  there  was  a  period  in  human  history  when  there  were 
no  human  beings  on  earth  higher  than  the  cave-dweller, 
so  there  was  a  time  when  the  highest  forms  of  animal  and 
vegetable  life  were  minute  creatures  and  plants  consisting 
only  of  a  single  cell.  It  is  such  low  forms  of  vegetable  life 
that  make  the  scum  on  the  still  waters  of  a  pond.  Step 
by  step,  in  both  the  animal  and  vegetable  world,  rose  the 
higher  forms.  The  descent  of  man  from  lower  forms  of 
life  used  to  be  considered  by  many  people  as  a  thought 
that  degraded  humanity,  but  it  is  the  most  promising  fact 
in  all  nature.  The  striking  thing  is,  not  that  we  are  re- 
lated in  some  way  to  the  apes  and  the  cavemen  but  that 
such  a  creature  as  an  ape  or  a  caveman  should  have  helped 
develop  such  a  beautiful  thing  as  a  little  child. 

This  progress  has  not  been  steadily  upward.  The  world 
of  life,  like  the  surface  of  the  globe  itself,  has  had  its  ups 
and  downs.  Wonderful  nations  like  Greece  and  Rome 
have  risen  and  flourished  and  passed  away,  but  they  left 


270   STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

the  best  of  themselves,  the  part  that  time  cannot  destroy. 
The  Greeks  taught  us  literature  and  art  and  the  grace  of 
life.  The  Romans  gave  us  a  science  of  government  and 
a  solid  way  of  doing  practical  things,  such  as  the  building 
of  good  roads  and  bridges.  The  great  lesson  of  history 
is  that  civilization  and  human  liberty  and  all  the  things 
that  make  life  worth  living  have  not  only  survived  the 
fall  of  empires  but  stand  to-day  on  higher  and  firmer  ground 
than  they  ever  did  before. 

THE  WORLD  THAT  MOTHER  MADE 

But  do  you  know  who  was  at  the  bottom  of  it  all? 
Mother  !  All  the  things  that  men  have  done  in  the  develop- 
ment of  national  life,  with  its  arts  and  industries,  every- 
thing we  call  civilization,  grew  out  of  the  life  and  industry 
of  the  home,  and  it  was  mother  who  finally  made  the  home. 
The  mother  idea  came  into  the  world  with  the  first  seed 
that  ever  started  out  to  make  its  own  way;  for  the  mother 
plant  had  provided  it  with  food  enough  to  keep  it  going 
until  it  could  get  well-established  in  business.  But  the 
kind  of  mothers  we  know,  mothers  who  stay  with  their 
babies  and  feed  them,  came  very  late  in  the  long  story  of 
life.  In  the  early  days  the  world  was  not  only  without 
flowers  and  birds  and  the  beautiful  trees  and  varied  land- 
scapes we  know,  but  it  was  motherless,  in  the  sense  that 
we  understand  mothers.  In  the  lowest  forms  of  life,  such 
as  the  insects,  the  mothers  and  children  never  saw  each 
other  at  all;  for  among  the  insects  just  as  it  is  to-day  the 
mother  simply  laid  the  eggs  and  then,  before  the  little 
insects  were  born,  passed  away.  Even  among  the  fish, 
who  are  much  closer  relations  of  ours  than  the  insects — 


THE  END   OF  THE  WORLD  271 

since  fish  belong  to  the  great  brotherhood  of  the  backbone 
— the  sense  of  motherhood  doesn't  get  beyond  looking  after 
the  eggs.  So  with  the  next  higher  group  to  which  the  frogs 
belong;  and  the  next,  the  reptiles.  Only  with  the  birds, 
the  next  group  above  the  reptiles,  do  we  begin  to  see  what 
motherhood  means.  Then  at  the  very  top  of  the  list  come 
the  class  of  animals  whose  very  name  has  "mamma"  in 
it;  the  "mammalia."  Among  these,  even  outside  the 
human  race,  we  find  very  striking  examples  of  family  love 
and  devotion.  The  gorillas,  for  instance,  although  they 
haven't  what  one  would  call  an  attractive  face,  are  good 
to  their  folks.  Not  only  does  Mamma  Gorilla  nurse  her 
babies  and  carry  them  in  her  arms  much  as  a  human  mother 
does,  and  fight  and  die  for  them,  but  a  famous  African 
traveller  tells  of  a  Mamma  Gorilla  who  stayed  safe  with 
the  babies  in  their  humble  home  of  sticks  in  the  fork  of  a 
tree  while  Papa  Gorilla  sat  all  night  at  the  foot  of  it,  with 
his  back  against  the  trunk,  to  protect  them  from  a  leopard 
that  had  been  seen  prowling  around. 

Among  most  animals  below  man  the  babies  are  soon 
able  to  leave  mother  and  shift  for  themselves,  but  in  the 
case  of  human  beings  the  baby  is  helpless  for  a  much  longer 
time.  So,  even  among  the  lowest  savages,  it  was  neces- 
sary for  father  and  mother  to  keep  together  and  look  after 
their  children.  Thus  grew  up  family  life;  and  out  of  the 
family  the  tribe;  and  out  of  many  tribes  living  together 
and  closely  related,  grew  first  small  and  then  larger  na- 
tions. Yet,  always  at  the  beginning,  it  was  the  mother, 
more  than  the  father,  who  looked  after  the  children  and 
taught  them,  so  bringing  before  the  world  the  idea  of  doing 
things,  not  for  one's  self  alone  but  for  others.  From  this 


272      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

came  the  mutual  giving  and  helping  which  made  national 
life  possible,  and  that  is  making  this  a  better  and  better 
world  to  live  in. 


IV.    THE  GREAT  UNSEEN 

So  it  is  very  plain  not  only  that  the  end,  the  purpose  of 
all  this  machinery  and  march  of  things  that  we  have  been 
going  through  since  the  beginning  of  Chapter  I,  is  to  make 
life  better,  more  beautiful  both  in  form  and  character,  but 
to  show  that  "all  nature  is  on  the  side  of  those  who  try 
to  rise."  l  It  is  plain  also  that  this  end  must  have  been 
foreseen  and  intended  from  the  beginning;  for,  from  the 
very  start  each  change  in  the  world  and  in  life  was  a 
preparation  for  another  and  a  greater  change.  The  change 
from  rock  to  soil  made  plant  life  possible;  the  growth  of 
plants  made  animal  life  possible,  and  so  on  up  through  the 
long  succession  of  changes  in  this  tree  of  life  by  which  all 
things  are  related  and  which  gave  us  the  infinite  variety 
of  good  things  we  already  have — fruit,  homes,  churches, 
schools,  art  galleries,  books,  railroads  and  steamships 
that  make  the  whole  world  neighbors;  the  telegraph,  the 
newspapers,  and  the  magazines  that  carry  thought  and 
knowledge  and  plans  for  the  common  good  so  fast  and 
far  that  already  it  is  as  if  a  whole  nation  with  its  millions 
had  a  heart  and  brain  in  common. 

Man  himself,  you  see,  has  become  one  of  the  great  forces 

of  nature  in  the  evolution  of  nature,  in  the  blossoming 

out  and  fruit-bearing  of  things.    But  now  notice  this:    Back 

of  all  that  man  does  and  all  that  the  rest  of  nature  does 

1  Drummond:  "The  Ascent  of  Man." 


THE  END  OF  THE  WORLD 


273 


From  the  painting  by  Burne-Jones 

THE  FIRST  DAY  OF  CREATION 


274      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

is  the  great  controlling  force  called  Mind;  and  this  Mind 
is  invisible.  If  I  should  say  of  some  great  man  that  he 
had  a  powerful  mind  you  would  know  just  what  I  meant; 
but  if  anybody  should  ask  "What  did  his  mind  look  like?" 
you  would  think  that  was  an  odd  question,  wouldn't  you? 

THE  MYSTERIOUS   PRINCESS   HIDDEN   IN   THE   BUD 

So  it  is  and  has  been  from  the  beginning.  We  can  see 
the  results  of  changes  of  one  thing  into  another  but  never 
just  how  the  changing  is  done.  While  it  is  no  longer  be- 
lieved that  species  were  given  a  certain  form  in  the  be- 
ginning and  that  they  have  always  kept  that  form,  it  is 
still  true  that  each  species  comes  into  being  from  some  un- 
seen cause — "  all  of  a  sudden, "  as  it  were.  Because  species 
thus  seem  to  vary  of  themselves,  and  not  for  any  reason 
that  we  can  see  these  changes  are  called  "spontaneous 
variations."  Always  back  of  the  material  nature  we  can 
see  is  a  nature  that  is  not  material;  a  part  of  nature  that, 
like  the  mind  of  man,  we  can  neither  see  nor  hear  nor  feel 
nor  know  by  any  of  our  five  senses.  Some  Unseen  Power 
forms  the  baby  plant  out  of  the  seed;  some  power  changes 
the  leaves  hidden  away  in  the  bud  into  the  petals  of  the 
flower.  When  the  leaves  gather  to  form  the  bud,  like  little 
hands  playing  "button,  button,  who's  got  the  button," 
where  do  you  suppose  the  flower  is  ?  It  isn't.  It  has  not 
yet  begun  to  be.  But  soon,  as  if  some  magician  had  waved 
his  wand  and  said  "Presto!  Change!"  the  pink  petals 
begin  to  form  there  in  the  dark  of  the  cup  and,  first  thing 
we  know,  out  steps  Miss  Blossom,  all  in  her  pink  and  gold 
like  a  princess  dressed  for  a  ball ! 

But    always   hidden  in  a  mystery  these  changes  take 


THE  END   OF  THE  WORLD 


275 


place.  We  can  peep  into  the  growing  bud  as  often  as  we 
like  and  we  will  never  catch  the  fairies  making  the  dress, 
nor  the  princess  putting  it  on.  We  always  see  the  thing 
after  it  is  done ! 

WONDERFUL   ART   BUT   WHERE   IS   THE  ARTIST? 

Another  thing:  How  do  the  fairies  of  Roseland  remember 
every  spring  just  how  a  rose  looked,  when  the  roses  of  last 
year  have  been  dead  and  gone  so  long  ?  You  see  they  work 
without  a  model,  something  great  artists  seldom  do;  and 
in  some  kinds  of  work,  as  busts  and  portraits  and  land- 
scapes, never  do  at  all.  Even  the  most  powerful  micro- 
scope doesn't  show  any  pattern  in  the  seed  for  the  seed 
to  go  by  in  growing  into  the  finished  plant;  or  in  an  egg 
to  tell  it  what  kind  of  a  bird  it  is  expected  to  be.  No,  not 
the  trace  of  a  pattern.  What  then,  guides  the  growth  of 
the  seed;  of  an  oak,  say,  so  that  it  finally  and  always  takes 
the  family  form?  Some  Power,  evidently,  as  intelligent 
as  the  power  that  moves  the  hand  of  the  human  artist 
when  he  paints  that  oak  into  his  landscape.  How  many 
of  us  have  stopped  to  think  that  not  only  in  the  world  of 
mind  but  in  the  material  world  itself,  all  forms  of  power 
are  as  invisible  as  the  fairies  that  work  unseen  in  the  rose- 
bud and  the  little  birds'  egg  and  the  big  rock  ?  All  power 
— what  we  call  steam  power,  wind  power,  electric  power 
and  the  rest — are  not  only  unseen  but  unseeable,  unfeel- 
able,  untastable.  We  know  steam  power  only  when  heat 
gets  into  the  water  and  makes  steam;  electric  power  only 
when  it  gets  into  a  wire  or  a  dynamo;  or,  passing  by  un- 
seen ways  through  the  air,  moves  the  wireless  telegraph 
receiver;  gravity  power  only  when  it  moves  something 


276      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A   PEBBLE 

as  the  water  of  a  waterfall;  or  when  it  is  helping  to  hold 
things — the  earth  and  the  other  worlds — in  their  appointed 
paths. 

HIDE  AND  SEEK  IN  THE  LIBRARY 

You  can  easily  see  why  evolution  is  the  most  talked  about  of 
all  phases  of  science — of  the  study  of  this  wonderful  world  we  live 
in.  One  reason  is  it's  such  an  astonishing  thing  in  itself,  this 
relationship  of  all  forms  of  life,  trees,  kittens,  birds,  and  every- 
thing; another  reason  is  that  in  reading  the  books  on  evolution 
you're  taken  into  every  field  of  knowledge  and  into  the  most  curi- 
ous and  striking  aspect  of  things  in  those  fields.  Could  anything 
be  stranger,  for  example,  than  a  little  theatre  in  a  chicken's  egg, 
over  which  pass  strange  shadowy  forms  that  seem  to  retell,  in  a 
kind  of  moving  picture  show,  the  story  of  how  one  form  of  life 
developed  out  of  another? 

Drummond's  "Ascent  of  Man"  tells  about  that  and  covers  the 
whole  subject  of  evolution.  It  is  one  of  the  books  which  no  one 
who  has  heard  of  this  wonderful  story  of  life  should  fail  to  read. 
Doctor  Drummond's  way  of  telling  the  story  is  very  attractive. 
Readers  from  the  Eighth  Grade  up  to  the  Eightieth  will  delight 
in  it,  and  they  won't  stop  until  they  read  it  from  cover  to  cover. 
I'll  guarantee  that ! 

Then  take  such  a  book  as  "The  World  of  Life,"  by  Wallace. 
"Alice  in  Wonderland"  is  nothing  to  it.  Here  are  some  of  the 
things  you  will  find  in  it: 

How  there  got  to  be  different  kinds  cf  rabbits  and  what  islands 
have  to  do  with  it. 

(Islands  are  almost  as  prominent  in  the  story  of  evolution  as  they 
are  in  the  story  of  adventure.  There  are  Robinson  Crusoes  until 
you  can't  rest !) 

How  the  pig  in  the  struggle  of  life  won  out  as  usual. 

Why  the  peacock  has  such  a  fine  tail  and  how  he  overdid  it. 

How  the  elephant  saved  his  life  by  lengthening  his  nose. 

How  the  birds  traded  their  teeth  for  feathers. 

How  shelled  creatures  coiled  and  uncoiled  their  shells. 

Why  we  miss  the  "missing  links."  (As  you  go  into  this 
subject  of  evolution  you  will  hear  a  good  deal  about  missing 
links.) 


THE  END  OF  THE  WORLD  277 

How  they  know  butterfly  wings  are  made  first  and  the  coloring 
and  patterns  laid  on  afterward. 

How  much  of  a  butterfly's  beauty  is  probably  known  to  the  but- 
terflies themselves. 

How  Nature  seems  to  make  things  just  to  be  pretty. 

And  these  are  just  a  few  of  the  things  in  one  of  Doctor  Wallace's 
books.1 

Then  he  was  such  a  fine  man  personally.  Why,  what  do  you 
think  he  did  ?  Although  he  thought  out  the  principle  of  evolution 
independently  of  Darwin,  and  wrote  an  essay  on  it  before  Darwin- 
had  ever  given  his  views  to  the  world,  yet  after  Darwin's  "Origin 
of  Species"2  came  out  Wallace  gave  Darwin  all  the  credit,  and  in 
his  own  autobiography  always  referred  to  the  theory  of  evolution 
as  the  "Darwinian  Theory."  Yet  Wallace  had  a  very  good  reason 
for  taking  this  generous  attitude,  as  you  will  see  from  his  auto- 
biography and  other  writings,  and  you  are  quite  likely  to  find  the 
reason  in  articles  on  Darwin  or  Wallace  or  "Evolution. 

The  relations  of  Darwin  and  Wallace  furnish  one  of  the  finest 
examples  in  history  of  the  best  thing  in  the  world— --human  friend- 
ship. 

Of  course,  like  so  many  other  great  men,  Wallace  was  one  of 
those  boys  whose  minds  never  grow  old.  -Read  in  his  autobiogra- 

1  In  addition  to  all  this  curious  and  absolutely  reliable  information 
that  ought  to  be  interesting  to  every  one  is  the  fact  that  Wallace  shows 
in  "The  World  of  Life"  how  there  must  have  been  Mind  and  Purpose 
back  of  it  all.     Doctor  Wallace  was  a  great  traveller  as  well  as  a  great 
student  of  nature — one  of  the  most  famous  in  the  history  of  science. 
His  works  include:   "Travels  on  the  Amazon  and  the   Rio  Negro," 
"The  Malay  Archipelago,"  "  Natural  Selection,"  "Darwinism,"  "Island 
Life  and  the  Geographic  Distribution  of  Animals." 

There  are  so  many  books  on  this  biggest  of  all  nature  topics— Evolu- 
tion— that  they  make  quite  a  library  in  themselves.  The  most  famous 
of  these  books  is  Darwin's  "Origin  of  Species,"  and  it  is  not  at  all  hard 
to  understand.  Other  books  bearing  directly  or  indirectly  on  evolu- 
tion are  "Animals  of  the  Past,"  by  Lucas,  "Creatures  of  Other  Days," 
by  Hutchinson,  Fiske's  "Destiny  of  Man,"  and  "Evolution  and 
Religion."  A  book  for  older  readers— one  of  the  latest  and  most  com- 
prehensive treatments  of  the  subject — is  Osborn's  "Origin  and  Evolu- 
tion of  Life." 

2  Of  "The  Origin  of  Species"  it  has  been  said  that  no  work  ever 
produced  so  profound  a  change  in  the  opinions  of  mankind. 


278      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PEBBLE 

phy  how  on  the  day  he  first  discovered  a  new  species  of  butterfly 
it  gave  him  a  violent  headache,  and  he  had  to  go  to  bed  to  get  rid 
of  it  and  quiet  his  nerves — he  was  that  worked  up ! 

Darwin  was  much  the  same  sort  of  a  man.  Everything  in  the 
world  was  interesting  to  him.  He  wrote  a  whole  book  about 
"Fish  Worms,"  for  example.  And  although  probably  the  most 
famous  man  in  the  history  of  natural  science  he  was  as  humble 
as  could  be,  always  looking  for  the  truth  and  ready  to  accept  criti- 
cisms no  matter  how  much  they  might  upset  his  own  previous 
conclusions,  provided  these  opposing  views  were  supported  by 
evidence.  Of  course  you  will  want  to  know  more  about  his  life, 
and  you  will  find  more  in  the  "Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin," 
£dited  by  his  son. 

How  do  you  suppose  this  boy  began  being  a  great  man — by  col- 
lecting beetles !  Beetles  and  outdoor  sport  were  his  chief  delight. 


USE    OF    THE    INDEX 

SOME  THINGS  YOU  CAN  DO  WITH  THIS 
INDEX 

I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  you  thought  that  an  index 
was  the  dullest  part  of  a  book. 

But  it  all  depends !  As  a  matter  of  fact,  with  your 
help,  I  am  sure  I  can  make  this  index  of  ours  one  of  the 
most  interesting  things  in  the  whole  story;  for,  like  the 
H.  &  S.,  it  gives  you  a  chance  to  "come  into  the  game." 
The  mind  enjoys  books  and  grows  upon  them  much  as  the 
body  grows  on  food,  but,  as  in  the  case  of  both  food  and 
books — and  books  are  food — the  good  you  get  depends  not 
only  on  the  food  but  how  you  season  it  and  eat  it.  You 
can't  expect  everything  of  the  cook ! 

Everybody  knows,  of  course,  how  to  use  an  index  to 
look  things  up  once  in  a  while  and  it  saves  time  if  the  in- 
dex not  only  tells  the  page  on  which  a  given  subject  is 
referred  to,  but  conveys  some  idea  of  what  that  reference 
is  about,  as  this  index  tries  to  do.  If,  for  example,  you 
are  studying  the  Alpine  regions  in  school  you  may  already 
have  covered  the  question  of  how  flowing  water  carves 
mountain  valleys,  but  you  may  not  have  had  anything 
about  why  the  Alps  don't  run  north  and  south,  as  so  many 
of  earth's  great  ranges  do;  and  so  what  could  be  a  more 
interesting  thing  for  you  to  take  into  those  delightful  class 
discussions  ? 

Your  teacher  knows,  although  you  may  not  have  real- 
279 


280      STRANGE  ADVENTURES  OF   A  PEBBLE 

ized  it,  that  these  class  talks  and  debates  by  the  pupils 
themselves  are  the  big  thing  in  modern  teaching.  The  best 
education,  we  know  nowadays,  isn't  the  mere  cramming 
down  of  facts,  as  people  used  to  think.  It's  training  in 
thinking,  and  in  standing  on  one's  own  feet! 

But  memory  training  is  important  too;  and  an  index  is 
the  best  thing  in  the  world  for  that.  Take  some  subject 
you're  studying  in  school — mountains,  for  example — they're 
always  studying  such  big  things  as  mountains,  the  work  of 
rivers,  and  so  on;  or  if  they  aren't  to-day  they  will  be  to- 
morrow. Look  at  the  references  as  questions  to  yourself 
and  see  how  well  you  can  answer  them:  "How  do  moun- 
tains help  make  water-gates  for  the  rivers?"  and  "Why  do 
they  have  earthquakes  in  regions  where  mountains  haven't 
got  done  with  their  growing?" 

Then  you  can  have  a  lot  of  fun  with  these  questions  at 
home  and  with  boy  friends,  after  you  have  read  the  book 
together.  For  instance:  Just  how  did  the  pebbles  help 
dig  the  Grand  Canyon?  And  that's  a  poser  for  many 
grown  people  too — people  who've  travelled  and  met  the 
Grand  Canyon  face  to  face !  Try  it  on  Father.  Yes,  and 
Teacher  too.  There  are  none  of  her  boys  that  a  teacher  is 
so  proud  of  as  the  boys  that  have  initiative — go-aheadi- 
tiveness — and  can  ask  good  questions  as  well  as  answer 
them. 

But,  best  of  all,  you  can  find  no  end  of  things  to  write 
about  for  your  language  work  in  school  and  for  the  little 
books  of  your  own  that  I've  already  suggested  in  the 
H.  &  S.  Take  the  subject  of  pebbles,  'for  example.  Al- 
though this  whole  book  has  to  do  with  the  life  and  adven- 
tures of  pebbles,  I  haven't  put  the  facts  together  in  just 


USE   OF   THE   INDEX  281 

the  way  you  will  if  you  follow  out  the  references  under 
the  heading  "Pebbles"  in  this  index.  If  you  don't  happen 
to  remember  how  pebbles  act  as  bankers  for  the  farmers, 
how  they  helped  make  the  Great  Lakes,  built  the  Grand 
Canyon,  and  so  on,  look  these  things  up  and  then,  as  they 
thus  become  digested  in  your  mind,  write  about  them  in 
your  own  way — the  way  you'd  talk  if  you  were  telling  some- 
body about  it.  Do  that  and  you'll  have  something !  one 
of  those  things  that  mothers  show  to  the  neighbors,  and 
that  teachers  show  to  visitors. 

Of  course  you'll  have  to  have  a  name  for  your  story  and 
you'll  think  of  plenty:  "What  One  of  My  Pebbles  Told 
Me,"  "The  Pebbles  in  the  World's  Work,"  "What  a  Won- 
derful Thing  a  Pebble  Is!"  "Why  Common  Pebbles  are 
Worth  More  than  Diamonds";  for  of  course  a  diamond  is 
a  kind  of  pebble. 

GETTING   ACQUAINTED   WITH   YOURSELF 

In  all  this  you  will  not  only  find  you'll  have  a  good  time, 
but,  let  me  tell  you,  you'll  be  getting  the  best  part  of  your 
education;  you'll  be  getting  acquainted  with  yourself, 
your  undeveloped  powers  of  memory — reasoning — expres- 
sion. You'll  find  before  you  get  .so  very  old  that  one  of 
the  most  important  elements  of  success,  of  doing  your  part 
in  the  world's  great  work  of  making  itself  better  all  the 
time,  is  in  having  something  worth  while  to  say  and  being 
able  to  say  it. 

This  was  the  making  of  the  Greeks;  and  the  Greeks,  you 
know,  were  the  most  wonderful  people  that  ever  were.  It 
all  started  with  old  "Know  Thyself"  Thales  of  Miletus. 

That's  what  did  it ! 


INDEX 


Africa,  children's  handwork,  illus- 
trating home  life  of  the  natives, 
including  the  elephants  and  the 
lions,  1 68 

Agassiz,  Louis,  and  his  stone  hut, 
43;  adventure  in  the  crevasse, 
51;  on  the  height  of  ancient 
glaciers,  123 

Air,  origin  of,  16;  how  corals  get 
their  breath,  225 

Alaska,  the  flowers  and  the  snow 
line,  44 

Albany,  Atlantic  tides  at,  221 

Alleghany  Mountains,  birth  of,  10 

Alps,  mountain  pastures,  41 ;  how 
rain  drops  helped  carve  the 
Alps,  67;  why  the  Alps  don't 
run  north  and  south,  136;  gla- 
cial "autographs"  on  their 
walls,  255 

Amazon  River,  its  stately  flow,  74 

Ants,  how  they  help  teach  men 
how  volcanoes  are  built,  123 

Apollo,  how  he  lighted  the  world,  2 

Appalachian  Mountains,  birth  of, 
10 

Arabian  desert,  physiognomy  and 
complexion,  165 

Arabian  Sea,  why  its  waves  salute 
the  Himalayas,  140 

Arabs,  life  in  the  desert,  183;  and 
the  Simoom,  184 

Atlas  Mountains,  morning  beauty 
of,  163 

Atoms,  defined,  relation  to  mole- 
cules, no 

Aurora,  the  dawn  goddess  and  her 
chariot,  2 


Avalanches,      impulsiveness      of; 
snap-shot  at  one  in  motion,  63 

Bad  Lands,  why  so  called,  114 
Bar  Harbor,  Nature's  remarkable 

masonry  in  Castle  Rock,  228. 
Bald    Mountains,    how   they   got 
their  crowns  shaved  off,  26,  28, 
123 

Beavers,  as  lake  makers,  192 
Bedding  planes,  defined,  217 
Bees,  and  Alpine  flowers,  45;  why 
they  hide  from  the  cloud  shad- 
ows,  56;   shape  of  honey  cells 
and  basaltic  columns,  243 
Beetles,  varieties  in  desert  places, 

1 80;  use  of  poison  gas,  182 
Big   Round   Top   Mountain,   how 

it  lost  its  peak,  248 
Birds,  life  in  the  desert,  178 
Bombs  (volcanic),  what  they  are 

and  how  they  are  made,  129 
Boulders,  Agassiz'  monument,  54; 
travels  of  Plymouth  Rock,  64; 
boulders  on  a  New  England 
hill,  145;  why  the  Indians  wor- 
shipped a  boulder,  146;  the 
strange  stranger  on  Mount  Abu, 
147;  as  mountain  climbers,  147, 
152;  why  there  are  no  big  caves 
in  boulder  regions,  148;  how 
boulders  help  tell  the  secret  of 
the  Ice  Age,  149;  how  torrents 
help  shape,  151;  how  glaciers 
carry,  151;  how  boulders  ride 
on  the  water,  153;  how  Jack 
Frost  builds  boulder  walls,  154; 
how  the  sun  helps  shape  boul- 


282 


ders,  155;  Geikie  on  the  story 
told  by  a  conglomerate  boulder, 
1,55;  Ruskin  on  boulders  in  art, 
157;  why  boulders  sometimes 
jump  up  from  the  ground,  158; 
how  rain  drops  split  boulders, 
171;  how  boulders  shiver  their 
skins  off,  170;  boulders  in  the 
rock  mills  of  the  sea,  216;  how 
perched  boulders  are  perched, 
149;  the  perched  boulder  in 
Bronx  Park,  in  New  York  City, 
and  its  autograph,  250 

Bridal  Veil  Falls,  how  it  got  its 
name  and  why  it  hurries  to 
"catch  the  tsain,"  74 

Butterflies,  how  they  help  in  Al- 
pine flower  gardening,  46;  why 
they  hide  from  the  cloud  shad- 
ows, 56 

Cactus,  the  desert  water  bottle, 
174 

Cactus  wren,  how  she  bars  her 
front  door  against  her  bad  neigh- 
bors, 177 

Caesar,  Julius,  his  literary  style 
compared  to  that  of  Mr.  Gla- 
cier, 254;  how  he  and  Mr. 
Glacier  went  into  winter  quar- 
ters, 256 

Canada,  her  sea  terraces  for  the 
gannets,  223 

Canada  thistles,  and  the  Siberian 
"wind  witches,"  178 

Canyons,  deepened  by  glaciers, 
26,  37;  how  pebbles  helped  make 
the  Grand  Canyon,  82;  how 
long  a  mile  is — straight  down ! 
87;  how  the  Grand  Canyon 
swallows  you  up,  88;  how  rivers 
wrote  the  history  of  the  Grand 
Canyon  and  how  they  cut  the 
leaves,  88 


INDEX  283 


Caravan,  the  marching  camels  and 
their  shadows,  185 

Carbonic  acid  gas,  and  air  mak- 
ing, 16;  how  it  helped  make  coal 
with  one  hand  and  the  Ice  Age 
with  the  other,  20;  how  it  helps 
the  volcanoes  feed  the  world 
128 

Carpathian  Mountains,  why  they 
do  not  border  the  sea,  138; 
their  ups  and  downs  under  the 
sea,  230 

Castle  Head,  a  remarkable  ex- 
ample of  Nature's  masonry,  228 

Catskill  Mountains,  how  they 
were  made,  116 

Cavemen,  a  caveman's  art  note 
on  mammoths,  22;  why  they 
were  the  handsomest  men  of 
their  day,  267;  the  joyous  lesson 
they  helped  teach,  269 

Caves,  relation  to  natural  bridges, 
85;  why  large  ones  are  never 
found  in  boulder  regions,  148; 
their  sightless  inhabitants,  186 

Centipede,  his  numerous  feet  and 
objectionable  character;  how 
the  trap  door  spider  slams  the 
door  in  his  face,  182 

Centrifugal  force,  and  the  birth 
of  worlds,  4;  and  the  direction 
of  mountain  ranges,  137 

Ceratosaurus,  his  dreadfulness 
and  his  name,  23;  and  Nature's 
dream  of  the  coming  of  man,  23; 
one  of  our  queer  cousins,  264 

Civilization,  its  constant  advance, 
but  with  ups  and  downs,  269; 
the  civilization  that  Mother 
made,  270 

Coal,  did  it  help  bring  on  the  Ice 
Age  ?  20;  bad  effect  of  coal  mak- 
ing on  plant  and  animal  life — 
volcanoes  to  the  rescue!  226; 


284 


INDEX 


coal  seams  and  the  records  of 
ancient  life,  245 

Colorado  River,  how  it  dug  the 
Grand  Canyon,  88 

Conglomerate  rock,  why  it  is 
called  "pudding  stone,"  96; 
conglomerate  boulders  as  his- 
torians, 155;  how  made  in  the 
sea  mills,  227 

Continents,  how  they  rose  out  of 
the  sea,  8;  how  the  fact  that 
they  are  still  rising  helps  the 
rivers  get  back  to  sea,  75;  the 
continents  and  Nature's  acci- 
dent insurance,  262 

Copernicus,  and  the  discovery 
that  there  are  worlds  of  worlds, 
4 

Coral  islands  and  reefs,  how  the 
sea  helps  the  corals  build  them, 
225 

Coyotes,  as  ventriloquists,  179; 
their  night  songs,  179;  how  they 
get  a  living,  180 

Crater  Lake,  the  blue  lake  in  the 
volcano's  mouth,  194,  195 

Crevasse,  origin  of  the  word,  51; 
what  a  crevasse  looks  like,  51, 
53;  Agassiz'  adventure  in,  51; 
voices  of,  54;  their  water-mills, 
55;  picture  of  a  crevasse  swal- 
lowing an  avalanche,  63 

Crystallization  and  the  fairy  land 
of  change,  93;  how  the  pebble 
caught  cold  and  what  came  of  it, 
94;  crystals  in  sugar  and  gran- 
ite, 94;  the  great  melting  pot 
and  the  remaking  of  the  rocks, 
96;  how  old  rocks  hatch  new 
ones  by  sitting  on  one  another, 
96;  how  mountain  making  helps, 
97;  how  Mother  Nature  uses 
salt  and  soda  in  cooking  rocks 
over  and  how  she  keeps  these 


materials  handy,  99;  an  illus- 
tration of  how  men  of  science 
study  things  out  for  the  fun  of 
it,  104;  the  crystal  fairies  and 
their  curious  ways,  106;  how 
crystals  help  tell  about  dikes, 
243 

Dead  Sea,  its  deadness  and  how  it 
died,  207;  and  the  story  of  Sod- 
om and  Gomorrah,  209;  what 
"Lot's  Wife"  looks  like  to-day, 
210;  ancient  history  on  the 
Dead  Sea's  walls,  249 

Deltas,  why  delta  river  mouths 
always  multiply  by  two,  167 

Descent  of  Man,  how  man  has 
risen  as  he  descended,  269 

Desert,  origin  of  Lybian  (myth), 
2;  enigmas  of,  161;  the  desert 
and  the  Sphinx,  162;  physiog- 
raphy and  coloring,  163;  "  Baths 
of  the  Damned,"  165;  river 
"skeletons,"  166;  indications  of 
former  heavier  rainfall,  166; 
Roman  aqueducts,  166;  "sand 
roses,"  1 68;  how  the  desert 
makes  its  sands,  168;  its  trade- 
mark on  its  sand  grains,  172; 
why  deserts  are  so  cold  at  night, 
170;  how  a  simoom  looks  from 
the  outside,  173;  how  it  begins 
business,  184;  the  plant  people 
of  the  desert,  174-175;  how  the 
Rose  of  Jericho  goes  to  sea,  176; 
the  cactus  wren  and  how  she 
bars  her  front  door  against  her 
bad  neighbors,  177;  the  "wind 
witches"  of  the  steppes,  178; 
animal  life  in  the  desert,  178; 
the  coyote  as  a  ventriloquist, 
his  night  song,  179;  bird  life, 
1 80;  why  the  desert  humming- 
birds have  rusty  coats,  1 80; 


INDEX  285 


how  the  trap-door  spider  slams 
the  door  in  the  centipede's  face, 
182;  a  beetle  that  uses  poison 
gas,  182;  wonderful  flight  of  the 
vulture,  183;  a  day  with  the 
Arabs  in  the  Sahara  desert,  183; 
the  cat,  the  dog,  the  Arab,  and 
the  struggle  for  life,  187,  188 

Diamonds,  form  of  their  crystals, 
107 

Dikes,  what  one  in  New  York  City 
tells  about  marble  making,  97; 
the  iron  walls  near  Spanish 
Peak,  235,  241 ;  dikes  in  the 
rocks  at  Marblehead,  242;  how 
dikes  get  their  driving  power, 
244 

Dinosaurs,  their  dreadfulness,  their 
habits  and  their  family  name, 
23 

Diplodocus,  his  name,  his  gentle 
nature,  his  defensive  tail  and 
how  it  helped  him  at  his  meals, 
24 

Domes  (Mt.),  123 

Drift  theory,  120 

Drowned  valleys,  212 

Drumlin,  why  an  Irish  boy  would 
know  what  "drumlin"  means, 
122 

Dunes,  163 

Earth,  story  of  the  spoiled  boy 
who  set  it  afire,  2;  how  much 
truth  science  finds  in  the  Phae- 
ton myth,  3;  theories  as  to  the 
earth's  origin  and  how  they 
compare  with  the  Bible  story, 
17;  watching  worlds  in  the  mak- 
ing, 5,  6;  the  sun  and  his  pebble 
worlds,  6;  how  you  can  watch 
the  world  turn  round,  7;  how 
the  continents  came  up  out  of 
the  sea,  8,  14;  lands  the  seas 


have  swallowed,  I  r ;  reasons  for 
thinking  the  continents  won't 
go  under  again,  12;  how  earth's 
slowing  up  helped  make  moun- 
tains, 137 

Earthquakes,  how  growing  moun- 
tains make  them,  86;  earth- 
quakes that  travel  incog.,  158; 
how  earthquakes  are  recorded 
in  the  veins  of  marble,  239; 
earthquakes  and  the  earth's 
__  "faults,"  243 

Echoes,  Arab  superstitions  about, 
187 

Electrons,  how  they  act  as  messen- 
ger boys  of  the  universe,  110 

Emerson,  on  the  industries  of  Eng- 
land, 214 

England,  her  heavy  losses  of  land 
to  the  sea,  214;  how  her  drowned 
rivers  helped  make  her  great, 
224 

Eskers,  defined,  122 

Esparto  grass,   176 

Europe,  how  most  of  her  rivers  get 
their  start,  73;  her  ragged  out- 
line and  the  "transgressions"  of 
the  sea,  219;  Europe's  geological 
biography  and  her  mountain 
chains,  230 

Evolution,  was  Nature  dreaming 
of  man's  legs  and  arms  when  she 
designed  the  dinosaurs?  23; 
"some  call  it  Evolution  and 
others  call  it  God,"  260;  answer 
of  Science  to  the  question 
"whither,"  261;  why  nothing 
"happens,"  in  the  great  course 
of  things — The  Accident  Insur- 
ance System  of  the  Universe, 
262 ;  kinship  of  kittens  and  apple 
trees,  264;  universal  acceptance 
of  the  evolution  theory-,  264;  the 
old  "special  creation"  theory, 


286 


INDEX 


265;  and  the  mysterious  special 
creation  theory  that  Science  has 
substituted,  274;  facts  that  sup- 
port the  evolution  theory;  the 
story  of  changing  forms  recorded 
in  the  rocks,  265;  the  "rabbit" 
that  turned  into  a  horse,  266;  as 
to  men  being  descended  from 
monkeys,  267;  how  evolution 
proves  the  world  is  getting 
better,  268;  how  man  has  risen 
as  he  descended,  269;  the  world 
that  Mother  made,  270 

Family,  the,  and  civilization,  271 
"Faults,"  geological,  defined,  243 
Finland,  its  butterflies,  and  the 

left-over  butterflies  of  the  Ice 

Ages,  48 
Fiords,  how  they  were  made  by 

the  Old  Men  of  the  Mountain, 

254 
Florida,    her    sympathetic    sister 

lakes,  200 
Folds,  how  the  story  of  the  crum- 

pling of  mountains  is  told  in  the 

veins  of  marble,  237 
Fossils,    how   they   help   tell    the 

story  of  marble,  100 
Frost,    how   it    helped    build    the 

stone  "Temple  of  the  Winds," 

33;  how  it  builds  boulder  walls, 

154 

Fujiyama,  Mt.,  why  it  resembles 
Mount  Rainier,  124 


Galileo,  and  the  discovery  that 
there  are  worlds  of  worlds,  4 

Geikie,  on  the  conglomerate  boul- 
der as  an  historian,  230 

Geodes,  Nature's  pebble  jewel 
boxes  and  how  they  are  made, 

101 


Geography,  when  all  our  geog- 
raphy was  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea,  8;  how  they  study  geography 
in  Boston  on  rainy  days,  68 

Geysers,  and  the  geyser  basins,  165 

Giant's  Causeway,  its  architec- 
ture, 243 

Gila  monster,  181 

Glacial  Period.      (See  Ice  Ages.) 

Glacial  tables,  how  stones  go  walk- 
ing in  glacier  land,  62 

Glacier  Mills,  55 

Glaciers,  how  snow  changes  itself 
to  ice,  26;  glaciers  in  their 
"working  clothes,"  29;  how  to 
make  glaciers  and  icebergs  in 
the  schoolroom,  32 ;  how  glaciers 
helped  make  the  gray  stone 
"Temple  of  the  Winds,"  33;  how 
the  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Ages  made 
the  Great  Lakes,  34;  songs  of 
the  glacier  and  how  it  sings,  42, 
56;  a  day's  visit  with  the  Alpine 
glaciers,  49;  the  crevasses  and 
the  adventure  of  Agassiz,  51; 
how  long  it  took  Agassiz  to  de- 
termine the  nature  of  glacial 
movements,  52;  why  the  peas- 
ants think  the  glacier  has  a  soul, 
54;  Mr.  Glacier's  caterpillar 
tractor,  62;  how  the  glaciers 
start  Europe's  rivers  in  business, 
73;  how  pebbles  tell  on  what 
part  of  a  glacier  they  travelled, 

251 

Golden  Gate,  entrance  to  San 
Francisco  harbor,  how  it  was 
made,  224 

Gorges,  26,  82 

Grand  Canyon,  88 

Granite,  ancient  lineage  and  social 
standing  among  earth's  rocks, 
17;  the  Granites  and  the  Fairy- 
land of  Change,  94;  how  they 


INDEX  287 


crystallize  their  neighbors,  103; 
how  they  help  make  sand,  170 

Gravitation,  how  it  pulls  the 
worlds  into  roundness,  5;  and 
helps  them  to  grow  up,  8;  how 
it  helps  sea  waves  to  salute  the 
mountains,  139;  equally  careful 
in  handling  big  worlds  and  little 
seeds,  261 ;  like  all  power  it  is 
invisible  and  intangible,  276 

Great  Basin,  records  of  the  two 
great  lakes  it  used  to  hold,  249 

Great  Lakes,  how  they  were  made 
in  the  Ice  Ages,  34;  an  Ice  Age 
lake  that  was  greatest  of  all,  193; 
tides  in  the  Great  Lakes  and 
tides  in  a  teacup,  201 ;  how  the 
glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age  tipped 
the  Great  Lakes  up,  253 

Great  Salt  Lake,  ancient  weather 
records  on  its  walls,  249 

Greek  civilization,  one  of  the 
things  that  do  not  die,  270 

Harbor  engineering  of  the  rivers 

and  the  sea,  221,  222 
Hieroglyphics,  picture  language  of 

the  Egyptians  and  how  'it  was 

read,  258 
Himalaya  Mountains,  glacial  table 

on,  a  lesson  in  picture-reading, 

59;  why  some  of  the  Himalayas 

are  called  "hills,"  117 
Horse,  evolution  of,  266 
Hot  Springs  (cause  of),  165 
Hudson  River,  action  of  the  tides, 

221;  the  Palisades,  241 
Hydrogen,    and    the    making    of 

earth's  air,  16 

Ice  Ages,  theories  as  to  their  origin, 
20;  the  three  union  stations  of 
the  ice  trains,  27;  how  the  gla- 
ciers put  the  Missouri  River  to- 


gether, 29;  how  they  pushed  the 
Mississippi  about,  30;  how  they 
turned  rivers  around  and  made 
waterfalls  for  New  England,  31; 
how  they  chiselled  out  stone 
bowls  for  the  Great  Lakes,  34; 
how  they  made  other  lakes,  194; 
the  thousand-year  clock  at  Ni- 
agara Falls  and  what  it  tells 
about  the  Ice  Age,  35;  how  the 
glaciers  set  Niagara  Falls  up  in 
business,  36;  Muir's  eloquent 
tribute  to  the  marvellous  "busy 
work"  of  the  snowflakes,  37; 
how  the  Ice  Age  glaciers  went 
off  and  left  the  butterflies  and 
the  flowers  in  the  Alps,  47 ;  how 
the  butterflies  missed  the  train, 
48;  how  Agassiz  discovered  the 
Ice  Age,  52;  how  the  glaciers 
moved  the  hills  about,  117; 
travels  of  the  boulders  and  how 
the  glaciers  rounded  them,  146, 
1 55 ;  why  there  are  no  big  caves 
in  glaciated  regions,  148;  rela- 
tion of  the  Ice  Ages  to  the  Dead 
Sea  and  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  206; 
Burroughs's  theory  as  to  future 
Ice  Ages,  219;  what  raindrop 
autographs  tell  of  the  Ice  Age, 
246;  a  perched  boulder  and  its 
autograph  in  a  New  York  City 
park,  250;  records  of  the  Ice  Age 
glaciers  compared  with  Caesar's 
Commentaries  —  curious  simi- 
larities, 252 

Icebergs,  how  to  make  them  in  the 
schoolroom,  32;  how  the  ice- 
bergs of  the  Ice  Age  gave  the 
boulders  a  ride,  153 

Ice  wells,  huge  ice  water  tanks 
that  the  Ice  Age  glaciers  left,  49 

Indian  Ocean,  why  its  waves  rise 
to  salute  the  Himalayas,  140 


288 


INDEX 


Islands,  oceanic,  the  tops  of  vol- 
canoes, 133;  islands  on  the 
Maine  coast  and  how  they  were 
made,  212;  how  the  sea  helps 
the  corals  build  their  islands, 
225 

"Joints,"  places  where  rocks  don't 
join,  how  made,  33;  how  they 
help  make  "perched  rocks,"  60; 
joints  in  the  "Marble  Rocks" 
at  Jabalpur,  105;  joints  and  the 
work  of  the  sea's  rock  mills,  216; 
use  of  joints  in  Nature's  stone 
architecture,  228 

Jordan  River,  why  it  was  born 
partly  grown,  73;  why  the  mak- 
ing of  the  Jordan  Valley  was  the 
death  of  the  Dead  Sea,  206 

Jungfrau,  summer  pastures  on,  41 ; 
its  beauty,  44 

Jupiter,  how  as  rain  god  he  put 
out  the  world,  3;  place  of  the 
planet  in  the  Solar  system,  6 

Keewatin,  one  of  the  central  sta- 
tions of  the  Ice  Age,  28 

Kentucky,  the  sink  holes  in  the 
cave  regions,  200 

Kepler  and  the  discovery  that 
there  are  worlds  of  worlds,  4 

Kettle  lakes,  how  the  glaciers  of 
the  Ice  Age  made  them,  196 

Labrador,  one  of  the  central  sta- 
tions of  the  Ice  Age,  28;  how 
the  butterflies  of  Labrador  tell 
that  their  ancestors  missed  the 
train,  49 

Lakes,  the  Ice  Age  lake  and  the 
"Temple  of  the  Winds," 33;  how 
the  Ice  Age  glaciers  made  the 
Great  Lakes,  34;  how  they 


helped  Lake  Erie  in  making 
Niagara  Falls,  36;  the  sleep  of 
lakes  and  how  it  brightens  them 
up,  80;  how  Mirror  Lake  shows 
Mount  Rainier  how  beautiful  he 
is,  130;  how,  with  Jack  Frost's 
help,  lakes  build  boulder  walls, 
134;  the  empty  lake  beds  of  the 
desert,  162;  "trade-marks"  on 
lake-shore  sand,  173;  how  lakes 
are  born,  192;  moods  of  lakes, 
198;  why  the  ducks  overlook 
some  lakes,  198;  where  moun- 
tain lakes  get  their  coloring,  199; 
sympathetic  action  of  sister 
lakes,  200;  how  some  lakes  act 
as  barometers,  201;  tides  in 
lakes,  201 ;  why  lake  storms  are 
particularly  dangerous,  202 ; 
peculiarity  of  storms  on  the  Sea 
of  Galilee,  202 ;  and  of  storms  on 
mountain  lakes,  203;  how  lakes 
grow  old  and  pass  away,  204; 
why  lilies  come  to  dying  lakes, 
204;  the  procession  of  the  trees 
to  the  margins  of  dying  lakes, 
204;  why  they  have  a  regular 
marching  order,  204;  the  Dead 
Sea  and  how  it  died,  205;  what 
science  says  of  the  legend  of 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  209; 
"Lot's  Wife"  as  she  looks  to- 
day, 210;  records  of  ancient 
weather  on  the  walls  of  Great 
Salt  Lake,  249;  how  the  Great 
Lakes  were  tipped  up  and  how 
they  tell  about  it,  253 

Lake  Agassiz,  a  great  lake  of  yes- 
terday which  could  swallow  all 
the  Great  Lakes  of  to-day,  193 

Lake  Baikal,  its  great  depth,  193 

Lake  Erie,  how  the  glaciers  helped 
it  make  Niagara  Falls,  36 

Lake  Superior  (size),  193 


INDEX 


289 


Laplace,  his  great  theory  of  the 
origin  of  worlds,  4 

Lapland,  strange  stories  its  butter- 
flies tell,  48 

Laurentian  Highlands,  how  they 
rose  out  of  the  sea,  9 

Lava,  how  it  makes  dikes  and  what 
a  New  York  City  dike  has  to  say 
about  the  origin  of  marble,  97, 
241;  how  lava  plays  "grand- 
father" in  the  Porphyry  family, 
102;  lava  and  the  flame  effects 
on  volcanic  clouds,  126;  lava 
plains,  126;  how  lava  helps 
raise  the  fine  fruit  and  wheat  of 
Washington  and  Oregon,  128; 
how  it  increases  the  violence  of 
delayed  volcanic  explosions, 
130;  the  lava  and  the  "fire  from 
heaven"  in  the  story  of  Lot, 
209;  the  iron  wall  near  Spanish 
Peaks,  235;  remarkable  archi- 
tecture of  the  Giant's  Cause- 
way, 243;  theory  as  to  what 
makes  the  lava  climb,  244 

Libyan  desert,  Greek  myth  as  to 
its  origin,  2 

Limestone,  how  it  turns  to  marble, 
97,  104;  how  the  shelled  crea- 
tures of  the  sea  help  make  it, 
101;  the  "Marble  Rocks"  at 
Jabalpur,  105;  the  place  of  lime- 
stone in  the  rock-making  system 
of  the  sea,  227;  limestone  and 
the  story  marble  tells  of  moun- 
tain making,  237,  239 

Little  Round  Top  (Mt.),  the  bat- 
tles that  rounded  it,  248 

Lizards, "  varieties  in  the  Arizona 
desert,  181 

London,  how  it  owes  its  greatness 
to  the  transgressions  of  the  sea, 
224 


Los  Angeles  River,  how  one  of  its 

tributaries  plays  hide-and-seek, 

80 
Lowell,  Mass.,  how  the  Old  Men 

of  the  Mountain  helped  build  it, 

34 

McCloud  River,  why  it  is  born 
half  grown,  73 

Maine,  advance  of  the  sea  upon 
its  coasts,  219 

Mammoth,  art  note  on,  from  the 
"Cavemen's  Diary,"  22;  an- 
cient members  of  the  elephant 
family  that  wore  underclothes, 
24 

Manchester,  Mass.,  how  the  Old 
Men  of  the  Mountain  built  its 
falls,  34 

Marble,  how  a  New  York  City 
dike  helps  tell  how  marble  is 
made,  97;  what  the  fossils  have 
to  say,  100;  how  it  is  quarried, 
103;  the  mysteries  in  marble 
walls,  235;  when  marble  flows, 
238;  the  cloud  effects  in  marble, 
239;  how  marble  tells  of  earth- 
quakes and  other  exciting  things, 

239 

Mars  (planet),  6 
Meanders,    engineering    work    of 

wandering  rivers,  81;  meanders 

and    the    making    of    natural 

bridges,  83 
Mediterranean  Sea,  its  connection 

with  the  making  of  the  Alps,  136 
Mercury  (planet),  6 
Metamorphism  (defined),  98 
Miller,  Hugh,  how  he  found  a  fish 

inside  of  a  stone  and  so  found 

Hugh  Miller,  159 
Mississippi    River,    how   the   Old 

Men  of  the  Mountain  pushed  it 

about,  30;  how  you  can  jump 


290 


INDEX 


across  it,  69;  the  mountains  of 
soil  it  carries  into  the  sea,  84 

Mississippi  River  System  (map),  67 

Mississippi  Valley,  when  it  was  at 
the  bottom  of  a  mediterranean 
sea,  10;  why  the  sea  went  away, 
138 

Missouri  River,  how  it  was  pieced 
together  and  pushed  about  in 
the  Ice  Age,  29 

Mohawk  River,  why  it  grew  taller 
as  it  grew  older,  72 

Molecules,  their  relations  to  atoms 
and  electrons,  109 

Moraines,  how  the  glaciers  take 
them  on  their  backs,  56 

Moulins,  the  "mills"  of  the  gla- 
ciers and  how  they  are  made, 

55 

Mountains,  earliest  arrivals  in  the 
mountain  world,  9;  origin  of 
bald  mountains,  26;  Muir  on 
the  marvellous  mountain  sculp- 
ture of  the  snowflakes,  37;  how 
mountain  peaks  are  kept  sharp, 
43;  rain-drops  as  mountain 
sculptors,  67;  mountains  and 
the  origin  of  river  valleys,  69; 
and  the  birth  of  partly  grown 
rivers,  72;  mountain  streams 
and  their  waterfalls,  77;  storm 
chorus  of  the  mountain  torrents, 
78;  how  mountain  lakes  and 
baby  rivers  go  to  sleep  together 
and  the  liveliness  of  the  rivers 
afterward,  80;  how  mountains 
help  make  the  water  gates,  86; 
why  growing  mountains  make 
earthquakes,  86;  why  almost  all 
granite  is  found  in  mountain 
regions,  97;  the  different  kinds 
of  mountains,  115;  why  moun- 
tains border  the  sea,  134;  why 
they  run  north  and  south,  137; 


why  sea  waves  rise  to  greet  the 
mountains,  139;  Ruskin  on 
mountain  drawing,  140;  resem- 
blance of  mountains  to  sea 
waves,  140;  how  mountains 
helped  solve  the  mystery  of  the 
stones  of  the  field,  151;  sunrise 
in  the  Atlas  Mountains,  163; 
why  desert  mountains  look  so 
gaunt  and  hungry,  164;  why  the 
desert  winds  are  constantly 
blowing  them  away,  171 ;  moun- 
tain shapes  and  the  law  of  the 
picturesque  in  Nature's  art 
work,  229;  how  the  mountain 
chains  are  the  making  of 
Europe,  230;  their  ups  and 
downs,  230;  why  the  markings 
in  marble  tell  the  story  of  moun- 
tain building,  237;  and  of  moun- 
tain shaking,  239;  ancient 
weather  records  on  mountain 
walls,  248 

Mountain  lakes,  the  blue  lake  in 
the  volcano's  mouth,  195;  why 
mountain  lake  storms  are  par- 
ticularly dangerous,  202;  and 
why  they  are  apt  to  come  at 
night,  202 

Mountain  meadows,  how  rapidly 
their  flowers  follow  the  snow,  44 

Mount  Fujiyama,  its  striking  re- 
semblance to  a  mountain  3,000 
miles  away,  124 

Mount  Hermon,  its  spring  that 
gives  birth  to  the  Jordan,  73 

Mount  McKinley,  remarkable 
snapshot  of  one  of  its  ava- 
lanches, 63 

Mount  Pelee,  its  discharge  of  huge 
rocks  and  whirling  bombs,  129; 
the  mysterious  shaft  that  rose 
and  fell,  132 

Mount  Ritter,  its  resemblance  to 


INDEX 


291 


the  sacred  mountain  of  Japan, 
124 

Mount  Shasta,  how  it  gives  birth 
to  a  river  that  has  no  babyhood, 
73;  how  the  mountain  itself  was 
born  at  the  crossroads  and  why 
this  is  apt  to  happen  in  the  case 
of  volcanic  mountains,  127 

Mount  Vesuvius,  why,  like  other 
active  volcanoes,  it  seems  to 
smoke  but  doesn't,  126,  127 

Mount  Washington,  its  interesting 
colony  of  descendants  of  butter- 
fly pilgrims  of  the  Ice  Age  who 
missed  the  train,  48 

Muir,  John,  on  the  wonderful  team 
work  of  the  snowflakes,  in  the 
Ice  Age,  37;  on  the  liveliness  of 
mountain  streams  after  a  little 
nap  in  mountain  lakes,  80;  on 
the  winter  sleep  of  the  mountain 
lakes  and  their  glad  awakening 
in  the  spring,  198 

Natural  bridges,  various  ways  in 
which  they  are  made  by  the  very 
streams  they  bridge,  83,  85 

Nebular  Hypothesis,  one  of  the 
theories  as  to  how  the  world  was 
made,  4;  how  it  differs  from  the 
latest  theory,  6;  the  Bible  story 
compared  with  both  theories,  17 

Neptune  (planet),  6 

New  England,  how  the  Old  Men 
of  the  Mountain  plowed  its 
farms  away,  31 ;  and  then  made 
up  for  it  by  putting  in  New  Eng- 
land's waterfalls,  32 

Newton,  his  connection  with  the 
theory  of  the  origin  of  worlds,  4 

New  York  City,  what  one  of  its 
big  rocks  tells  about  marble 
making,  97;  what  its  harbor 


owes  to  the  engineering  of  the 
sea,  221,  222;  the  perched  boul- 
der in  Bronx  Park  and  its  auto- 
graph, 250 

Niagara  Falls,  its  thousand-year 
clock  and  what  it  tells  about 
the  Ice  Age,  35;  how  the  Old 
Men  of  the  Mountain  set  the 
falls  up  in  business,  36 

Nitrogen,  how  it  helped  to  make 
fresh  air  for  the  new-born  world, 
16 

Norway,  interpretation  of  the 
handwriting  on  the  walls  of  its 
fiords,  254 

Ogden  Canyon,  curious  example 

of  a  rock  fold,  238 
Ohio  River,  how  the  Old  Men  of 

the    Mountain    helped    it    by 

turning  some  rivers  around,  31 
Omar  Khayyam,  answer  of  Science 

to    the    universal    riddle    that 

puzzled  him,  261 

Origin  of  Species.   (See  Evolution.) 
Oxygen,    its   use   in   making   the 

world's   air,    16;    how   the   sea 

feeds  oxygen  to  the  corals,  225 

Pack  Rat,  his  remarkable  fortress 
in  the  desert,  187 

Paleontologists,  the  wizards  of 
queer  anatomies  and  the  strange 
forms  they  conjure  up  from  the 
fragments  of  old  bones,  266 

Palestine.     (See  Dead  Sea. ) 

Palisades,  how  they  were  made  in 
the  "Middle  Ages,"  241 

Pebbles,  how  they  tell  of  old  sea 
beaches  on  inland  mountain  and 
hill,  14;  their  enormous  age,  18; 
dramatic  stories  the  pebble 
scratches  tell,  26;  how  the  Old 


292 


INDEX 


Men  of  the  Mountain  used  peb- 
bles in  turning  New  England 
rivers  around,  31;  how  pebbles 
helped  deepen  the  basins  of  the 
Great  Lakes,  34;  how  they  still 
help  run  the  thousand-year  clock 
at  Niagara  Falls,  35;  how  they 
help  the  glaciers  talk,  56;  why 
the  pebbles  of  Glacier  Land 
can't  walk  as  the  big  stones  do, 
62 ;  how  the  river  pebbles  act  as 
bankers  for  the  farmers  and  the 
sea,  80;  how  the  pebbles  helped 
dig  the  Grand  Canyon,  82;  how 
they  tell  about  doings  in  the 
Fairyland  of  Change,  97;  how 
a  pebble  may,  in  its  time,  play 
many  parts,  99;  how  they  help 
unravel  the  secrets  of  the  h$s, 
119;  how  they  help  dying  rivers 
multiply  by  two,  167;  how  they 
report  the  fact  that  the  storms 
on  the  Sea  of  Galilee  are  par- 
ticularly severe,  203 ;  their  fixed 
place  in  the  rock-making  system 
of  the  sea,  227;  how  they  tell  of 
rough  experiences  in  river  travel, 
250;  and  of  high  winds  at  sea, 
desert  sandstorms,  rides  on  gla- 
ciers, and  in  what  compartments 
they  travel,  251 

Peninsulas,  how  the  drowning  of 
rivers  helps  to  make  them,  212 

Pennsylvania,  autographs  left  by 
ancient  reptiles  in  the  sandstone 
under  the  coal  seams,  245 

Perched  boulder,  in  Bronx  Park 
and  its  autograph  on  its  rock- 
bed,  250 

Quartz,  how  it  helps  to  make  the 
pebble  jewel-boxes — the  geodes, 

101 

Quartzite,  (denned),  98 


Rain,  what  fossil  rain-drops  tell  of 
ancient  weather,  224 

Rat,  desert,  186 

Reclus,  on  the  motion  of  glaciers, 
62;  on  the  mountain  whirlpools 
of  stones,  141;  on  the  severity 
of  lake  storms,  202 

Reefs,  coral,  how  the  sea  helps  the 
little  people  build  them,  225 

Reptiles,  with  bird  feet,  246 

Rivers,  how  the  Mississippi  River 
and  others  were  pushed  about 
in  the  Ice  Age,  26;  how  the  Old 
Men  of  the  Mountain  helped 
the  Ohio  by  turning  some  rivers 
around,  31;  how  they  helped 
make  New  England  a  great 
manufacturing  section  by  turn- 
ing some  other  rivers  around, 
32;  how  they  helped  build  the 
"Temple  of  the  Winds,"  33; 
the  little  boy's  definition  of  a 
river  system,  66;  how  the  sea 
and  the  rivers  take  turn  about 
in  emptying  into  each  other,  66; 
their  wonderful  work  in  the 
mountains,  67;  the  Mississippi 
River  system,  67;  how  they 
study  the  work  of  rivers  on 
rainy  days  in  Boston,  68;  how 
you  can  jump  across  the  Missis- 
sippi, 69;  what  springs  do  for 
rivers,  69;  how  the  springs  act 
as  regulators  of  river  flow,  72; 
how  rivers  grow  at  the  top,  72; 
why  some  rivers  are  born  partly 
grown,  72 ;  how  most  of  Europe's 
rivers  get  their  start,  73;  why 
many  little  rivers  have  to  jump 
to  catch  the  train,  74;  why  all 
rivers  flow  toward  the  sea,  75; 
beautiful  way  in  which  Ruskin 
tells  of  the  response  of  rivers  to 
the  call  of  the  sea,  76;  the  hu- 


INDEX 


293 


man  nature  in  rivers,  76;  baby 
ways  of  baby  rivers,  76;  why 
waterfalls  are  found  only  in 
young  streams  and  more  often 
as  you  near  the  source,  76;  how 
rivers  play  in  the  rain,  78;  storm 
chorus  of  the  mountain  torrents, 
78;  where  to  look  for  hiding 
rivers,  78;  how  rivers  sleep  in 
mountain  lakes  and  how  lively 
they  are  when  they  wake  up,  80; 
why  rivers  grow  more  thrifty  as 
they  grow  older;  how,  with  the 
help  of  the  pebbles,  they  act  as 
bankers  for  the  farmers  and  the 
sea,  80;  the  machinery  of  rivers 
includes  circular  saws  and  dirt- 
spreaders,  82;  how  a  river  dug 
the  Grand  Canyon,  82,  88;  the 
automatic  stop  in  the  river  ma- 
chinery, 83;  enormous  amount 
of  soil  carried  by  the  Mississippi 
into  the  sea,  84;  how  rivers  cut 
mountains  in  two,  85;  how  riv- 
ers help  in  mining  granite,  97; 
how  they  help  make  hills,  117; 
how  they  combine  with  the 
boulders  to  help  out  the  artists, 
157;  the  land  in  which  there  are 
river  beds  without  rivers  and 
rivers  without  mouths,  162;  the 
skeletons  of  dead  rivers  and 
what  they  tell  of  the  past  history 
of  the  desert,  166;  why  dying 
rivers  multiply  by  two,  167; 
harbor  engineering  of  the  rivers 
and  the  sea,  22 1 ;  how  rivers 
made  the  Golden  Gate  of  San 
Francisco  and  so  made  San 
Francisco,  223;  the  rivers  and 
the  rock  mills  of  the  sea,  227; 
the  river's  trade-mark  on  its 
pebbles,  250 
Rocky  Mountains,  how  they  were 


born,  10;  their  relation  to  the 
Mediterranean  Sea  that  is  no 
more,  135;  why  they  are  now 
so  far  from  the  sea,  138;  how 
the  mountain  waves  of  stone 
resemble  the  waves  of  the  sea, 
140;  folded  strata  that  illustrate 
Ruskin's  line  about  the  strange 
quivering  recorded  in  mountain 
rocks,  142 

Romans,  some  of  the  big  things  we 
owe  to  them,  270 

Rose  of  Jericho,  what  it  is  like  and 
how  it  puts  to  sea,  176 

Round  Tops  (Mt.),  how  they  are 
formed,  123 

Ruskin,  on  the  response  of  rivers 
to  the  call  of  the  sea,  76;  on  the 
sleep  of  lakes,  80;  on  mountain 
drawing,  140;  on  the  strange 
"quivering  of  substance"  of 
mountains,  141;  on  the  art 
lessons  to  be  learned  from 
stones,  158;  on  the  correct  draw- 
ing of  boulders,  160 

Sahara  Desert.     (See  Desert.) 

St.  Lawrence  River,  how  the  Old 
Men  of  the  Mountain  took  some 
of  its  rivers  away,  30;  how  the 
Old  Men  used  it  in  making  the 
Great  Lakes,  34 

Salt,  how  Mother  Nature  uses  it 
in  warming  over  rocks,  99;  how 
Father  Neptune  uses  it  in  his 
rock  mills,  217 

Sand,  how  it  helped  build  the 
stone  "Temple  of  the  Winds," 
33;  how  Mother  Nature  dis- 
solves it  out  of  sandstone  in  her 
rock  cookery,  99;  how  the 
crystal  fairies  give  sand  grains 
a  new  lease  of  life,  108;  how  the 
sand  helped  shape  the  old  Indian 


294 


INDEX 


of  Mt.  Abu,  147;  color  of  desert 
sand,  165;  how  the  desert  makes 
its  sand,  168;  "sand  roses,"  168 

Sandstone,  its  place  in  the  rock- 
milling  system  of  the  sea,  227 

San  Francisco  Bay,  how  it  was 
made,  the  two  rivers  that 
opened  its  Golden  Gate,  222 

Saturn  (planet),  5,  6 

Sea,  when  the  seas  were  all  in  the 
sky,  1 6;  how  its  stratification  of. 
rock  helped  build  the  "Temple 
of  the  Winds,"  33;  the  Alps, 
like  sea  waves  turned  to  stone, 
50;  how  the  sea  flows  into  the 
rivers,  the  endless  circuit  of  the 
waters,  66;  why  the  rivers  al- 
ways get  back  to  sea,  75;  how 
the  pebbles  help  feed  the  sea  fish 
and  furnish  material  for  the 
sea's  rock  mills,  81;  the  Grand 
Canyon  and  the  ancient  sea,  88; 
how  the  sea  helps  Mother  Na- 
ture do  the  work  in  her  rock 
cookery,  99;  why  volcanoes  and 
mountains  border  the  sea,  133, 
134;  why  sea  waves  rise  to  greet 
the  mountains,  139;  how  sea 
sand  grains  differ  from  those  of 
the  desert,  173;  the  rock  mills  of 
the  sea,  method  in  the  madness 
of  the  on-shore  waves,  212;  why 
the  sea's  chief  business  at  first 
seems  to  be  that  of  eating  us  up, 
213;  the  sea  in  literature  and 
art,  213;  England's  heavy  losses 
to  the  sea,  214;  how  helpless  the 
Old  Man  of  the  Sea  is  without 
his  tools,  215;  how  he  uses  the 
stone-throwing  engines  and  the 
battering-ram  of  the  Romans, 
216;  what  he  knows  about 
wedges  and  pneumatic  tools, 
216;  the  hidden  enemies  in  the 


rocks  of  the  sea,  216;  planing- 
mills  of  the  winter  seas,  217; 
how  stones  are  carried  out  to 
sea,  218;  how  the  sea  has  shaped 
Europe,  219;  the  sea  as  a  build- 
er, why  Father  Neptune  is 
like  Old  King  Cole,  220;  harbor 
engineering  of  the  rivers  and 
the  sea,  221,  222;  how  the  sea 
helped  teach  shore  engineering 
to  man,  223;  how  it  has  helped 
make  London,  New  York,  and 
other  great  cities,  223,  224;  how 
Father  Neptune  feeds  the  coral 
people,  225;  the  art  work  of  the 
sea,  227,  228;  Nature's  building 
blocks  and  the  sea,  228;  the  ups 
and  downs  of  Europe's  moun- 
tains under  the  sea,  230;  how 
sea  tides  help  in  recording  rain- 
drop marks  in  stone,  244 

Sea  caves,  what  they  told  about 
how  the  continents  came  up  out 
of  the  sea,  14 

Sea  of  Galilee,  why  its  storms  come 
so  suddenly  and  usually  at 
night,  202,  203;  how  the  pebbles 
on  its  shores  tell  that  these 
storms  are  severe,  203;  why  it 
parted  company  with  the  Dead 
Sea,  206 

Sea-shells,  how  some  of  them  tell 
how  marble  is  made,  100 

Seismograph,  the  device  for  get- 
ting the  autograph  of  earth- 
quakes, 240 

Shakespere,  how  he  emphasizes 
the  rough  side  of  Father  Nep- 
tune's nature,  213;  on  the  man 
and  the  swallowing  waves,  219; 
his  reference  to  the  greatness  of 
Mr.  Caesar,  252 

Shaler,  Dr.,  on  the  stone  auto- 
graphs of  rain-drops,  how  they 


INDEX 


295 


throw  light  on  the  climate  of 
ancient  days,  246 

Shasta  River,  why  it  is  born  partly 
grown,  73 

Sierra  Nevada  Mountains,  Muir 
on  how  the  snowflakes  helped 
carve  them,  37 

Silica,  its  use  by  Mother  Nature 
in  making  sandstone,  grass, 
wheat,  and  corn,  99 

Slate,  and  the  Fairyland  of  Change, 
98;  its  place  in  the  rock  mills 
of  the  sea,  227;  ancient  auto- 
graphs found  in  slate,  245 

Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  the  Bible 
story  of  their  destruction  and 
what  Science  has  to  say  about 
it,  208 

Soil,  how  it  was  made  in  the  be- 
ginning of  things,  11;  how  the 
Old  Men  of  the  Mountain  car- 
ried New  England's  best  farms 
away,  31 ;  how  river  pebbles  act 
as  bankers  for  the  farmers,  80; 
how  the  sea  helps  make  good 
farming  land,  222;  Nature's  art 
work  and  the  making  of  soil,  229 

Solar  system,  how  it  was  discov- 
ered that  there  are  worlds  of 
worlds,  4;  Laplace's  theory  as 
to  the  origin  of  the  Solar  system, 
4;  the  planetessimal  theory,  6 

Soldanella,  the  flower  of  the  Alps 
that  blooms  its  way  up  through 
the  ice,  45 

Special  Creation  theory,  265 

Spiders,  the  tarantula  and  the 
tarantula  killer,  181 ;  the  spiders 
of  the  Arizona  desert,  182;  how 
the  trap-door  spider  slams  the 
door  in  the  centipede's  face,  182 
Spontaneous  variation,  the  scien- 
tific modification  of  the  ola 
"Special  Creation"  theory,  274 


Springs,  not  only  start  rivers  in 
life  but  go  on  feeding  them,  69; 
how  rain-drops  stored  in  big 
stone  safes  keep  the  springs 
going,  69;  springs  that  work 
like  a  town  pump,  70:  hot 
springs  and  the  geysers,  165 

Stratification,  defined;  how  it 
helped  make  the  "Temple  of 
the  Winds,"  33;  how  it  helps  in 
marble  quarrying,  103;  as  shown 
in  the  "Marble  Rocks"  at 
Jabalpur,  105;  how  it  helps  in 
the  making  over  of  rock  in  the 
sea's  mills,  217 

Stratus  clouds,  their  counterparts 
in  marble  and  what  these  mar- 
ble cloud  pictures  mean,  239 

Striae,  scratches  made  in  rocks  by 
glaciers,  and  how  they  helped 
to  disclose  the  great  secret  that 
there  was  an  Ice  Age,  121;  the 
big  boulder's  autograph  in 
Bronx  Park,  New  York  City, 
250 


Tarantula,  and  the  life  struggle  in 
the  desert,  181 

Terraces,  what  they  tell  about  the 
tipping  up  of  the  Great  Lakes 
once  upon  a  time,  253 

Tides,  in  lakes  and  in  teacups, 
201 ;  and  the  harbor  and  shore 
engineering  of  the  sea,  221,  225; 
how  they  help  preserve  the 
autographs  of  ancient  rain- 
drops, ancient  reptiles,  and 
other  things,  244 

"Transgressions"  of  the  sea,  de- 
fined, 218;  how  they  help  to 
make  great  cities,  223;  how  they 
help  in  the  art  work  of  the  sea, 
227 


296 


INDEX 


"Umbrella  Parties,"  an  interest- 
ing form  of  geography  study  in 
Boston,  68 

Uranus  (planet),  6 

Valleys,  howcrooked  riversbroaden 
them,  82 

Venus  (planet),  6 

Vesuvius,  why  it  seems  to  smoke 
but  doesn't,  126,  127 

Volcanoes,  what  they  tell  about 
the  inside  of  the  earth,  3;  why 
volcanoes  were  more  numerous 
in  early  days,  16;  difference 
between  ordinary  mountains 
and  volcanic  mountains,  114, 
123;  the  volcanic  mountains  in 
the  Sahara  and  the  "Baths  of 
the  Damned,"  165;  the  blue 
lake  in  the  volcano's  mouth,  194; 
volcanoes  and  "the  fire  from 
heaven"  in  the  Bible  story  of 
Lot,  209;  how  volcanic  explo- 
sions help  to  cause  transgres- 
sions of  the  sea,  219;  Mr.  Vul- 
can's famous  castle  on  the 
Hudson,  241 

Vulture,  his  wonderful  abilities 
as  a  flying  machine,  182 

Wasp,  desert,  how  it  disposes  of 
the  tarantula,  181 

Waterfalls,  how  the  Old  Men  of 
the  Mountain  put  them  in  for 
New  England,  to  make  up  for 
carrying  her  farms  away,  31; 
how  they  set  Niagara  Falls  up 
in  business  and  started  the 
thousand-year  time  clock,  35, 
36;  why  the  Bridal  Veil  Falls  in 
the  Yosemite  has  to  jump  to 
catch  the  train,  74;  why  water- 


falls are  found  only  in  young 
streams  and  oftenest  near  the 
source,  76 

Water  Gaps,  how  the  rivers  cut 
them  with  the  help  of  pebbles, 
85 

Weathering,  examples  of,  33,  60, 
97,  147,  228,  229,  231,  241,  243, 
248 

Wind,  how  it  helped  carve  the 
"Temple  of  the  Winds,"  33; 
how  it  helps  make  pillars  for 
perched  rocks,  60;  how  it  helped 
carve  the  strange  old  Indian  of 
Mt.  Abu,  147;  how  it  helps  the 
desert  in  trade-marking  its  sand, 
173;  the  wind  witches  of  the 
Steppes,  178;  why  lake  wind 
storms  are  particularly  danger- 
ous, 202;  the  winds  and  the 
night  storms  on  the  Sea  of 
Galilee,  202;  how  winds  help 
fill  up  the  sea,  219;  stone  auto- 
graphs of  ancient  breezes,  247; 
pebble  facetted  by  wind-blown 
sand,  252;  wind  ripples,  248 

Wren,  desert,  how  she  locks  her 
front  door  against  her  bad 
neighbors,  177 

Wyoming,  the  ancient  bones  found 
in  its  soil  and  the  wonderful 
story  they  told  about  horses,  266 

Xenophanes,  the  wise  old  Greek 
who  first  suggested  that  the 
mountains  had  risen  out  of  the 
sea,  13 

Yosemite  Valley,  why  the  rivers 
of  the  little  valleys  have  to 
jump  to  catch  the  train,  74 


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